Birthday Celebrations Continued

Jacob turned 5 on the 13th of May. He was pretty excited and it was a big day for him (and an exhausting day for his parents). He started the day being serenaded by his family and opening his birthday presents - a lawn chair, bug catcher and his first gun - a water gun.

Jacob appears pretty pleased with his water gun.

Since we had no other commitments on Jacob's birthday, we decided to do his friend party on his actual birthday. We picked up 4 friends and went to Brunswick Bowl in Eden Prairie. Fred and Auntie Drea met us there and my parents brought Gavin, so we had plenty of help. Plus we had a "Party Hero" named Kathy who used to be a preschool teacher to lead our group of "bowlers". She was awesome and made the party almost relaxing for us chaperons.

Here are the kids getting their bowling lesson from Kathy.

Jacob's party guests - Kyle (known since age 2 from MOMS club playgroup), Parker (known since infancy, they were in the special care nursery together as preemies), Katie (new friend from preschool, yes, she's only 5), Bobby (also an early playgroup friend and now preschool friend)


After the bowling the kids got tokens to play video games. Age 5 is probably too young to do this, but they had fun anyway. Here they are "racing". Games took longer than I thought, I thought they would each blow thru $3 pretty fast, but they were very thoughtful about where they would put their tokens.

At then end of the party we wrapped up with cake and present opening and then delivered the kids back home.

We started a new tradition on Gavin's birthday and went to the Rainforest Cafe to eat and then to Nickelodeon Universe for rides and Jacob wanted to continue that tradition. Luckily my mom got Jacob to take a nap in between his birthday party and our night out.

The boys and I at Rainforest Cafe.

Jacob requested a Lava Cake at Rainforest Cafe. We had all had our fill of chocolate cake by the end of the day.

Gavin and Jacob with the Rainforest Cafe elephant.

Riding the "Big Rigs".

Riding "Blues Clues"

Another big celebration at the Middendorf house this month was Fred's completion of his Master's program. He now has his masters in Software Engineering. He completed this degree with two co-workers, and his reportees, Steve and Austin. They didn't take any dignified pictures by a St Thomas sign or anything, they had to take their picture by the sculpture with a "bulge".

Steve, Austin and Fred.

Jacob and Gavin completed their gymnastics lessons. It was so fun to watch Gavin learn to follow directions and do the different skills, he became quite a good somersaulter. Jacob moved to the big gym after Christmas and overcame some fears (of the high bar) and really showed off his core strength on the rings. We are taking the summer off to enjoy all the other activities we have on the calendar, well, mostly for Jacob, but I am sure Gavin and I will do fun stuff too.

Gavin doing a Ta-Da with his ribbon.

Jacob's pose.