5 Big Ones

Last Friday Peter turned a whopping 5 years old!

For breakfast we made 'birthday pancakes.' Which are really just regular pancakes but with sprinkles. 

They were a major hit.

 Grandma had gotten in the night before and that afternoon we took cupcakes to Peter's class at school. 

Peter and I with his wonderful teacher, Mrs. Salpy. 

Then on Saturday we had a full-fledged Lego party for the little man.

I even made this nifty Lego cake if you can believe it! Peter was in love with it.

 For the party, we played Lego 'search and rescue' where we hid lots of lego men cutouts around the backyard and the kids had to go rescue them. 

Despite having pouring rain the previous two days, we were blessed with a perfectly sunny day for the party. Such luck.

Here's Peter with his friend from school, Ben.

And Benji & Mason at the Lego table.

 

Then we cut the cake

 and Peter opened presents. 

I swear that kid now has enough legos to last him till he's at least 12. 

Travis and his co-worker Andy with some of Peter's lego loot.

This was Peter's face practically the entire day. He was so excited for his party.

 We had a wonderful time -- I love having friends over! But I think we won't be doing any large-scale parties any time in the future. It was a bit of work.

But so worth it for our handsome little man. 

Happy Birthday buddy!

Schmidt's Tunnel v.2

In honor of MLK Jr. Day, we once again ventured out with Travis' co-workers for the Fourth Annual Off-Roading Adventure returning once again to Schmidt's Tunnel. Luckily our little Honda once again made it through despite some misgivings on my part and we had a fabulous day full of sun and adventure!

First we stopped off at an old X-15 crash site (we were with a slew of aerospace engineers), 

which just had to include a short hike to find a geocache (which we never did locate).

Next up was lunch and a stop at a ghost town -- an old mining town which has this neat little museum with lots of mining equipment and even a steam locomotive which you can be sure my boys thought was pretty rad. 

 At one point we did manage to lose Peter which induced no small amount of panic on my part. Apparently he had left the group to go back to the car because, as he said, "I just needed some alone time." After explaining that was fine, just tell us first, we finally set off for the grand finale, a trip through Schmidt's Tunnel.

Trav and Pete checking out the blood stains on a particularly low-hanging spot.

Back out in the sun on the other side of the tunnel. 

 It's pretty interesting to see the difference in our family from this and three years ago when we first went there. 

Hangin'

We finally got hit by the cold weather and as we can't keep little boys inside all day, we've taken to bundling Benji up like Randy on The Christmas Story.

And here's Pete just chillin' by his 'pirate ship.'

There's that smile.

And here comes little brother just to make life more interesting.

And no post of the boys would be complete without Peter's latest lego invention.

"It's a wrecking crane Mommy. It's super cool."