Birthday days - Luke turns 5

Birthdays seem to come around fast!  Birthday week kicked off when Granny arrived from Jo'burg with lots of lovely goodies hidden in her bags. The excitement levels climbed fast until Thursday FINALLY arrived. 

The Big Day started super-early with special time at breakfast (pancakes, no less, flipped by Dad), pressies (a real bike, Lego and a Spidey watch from Granny) and then a high speed exit out the door to get Jessica to school. Granny and Mum took Luke in along with spiderman cupcakes for class celebrations (there's a pic of him with James, born in the same hospital on the same day, same doctors - now buddies at school). 

While the small boy enjoyed class time, Granny and Mum got the house ready: huge boxes to paint, Dad's rope spiderweb up in the tree, the zipline ready for action, snacks on the table, cookies for moms... ah, and treats for games. The first small people arrived 2 hours before but were successfully distracted by lunch and a dvd while adults quickly sorted out last details. And then... chaos!

I still have no idea how many kids we hosted, but they all had fun, got painted and had a chance to paint, iced marie biscuits, threw themselves out of the treehouse and scoffed Luke's ice cream cake (23 cones to kids, 1 to Granny, no idea if some kids missed out?)

We played "Spider bite" and that was it. Kids everywhere, having a ball! Adam was in the thick of it all, as always, launching and then catching kids, taking photos in-between. Even Monica popped in to say hi and happy birthday. And, to conclude, a pizza for the Man of the Day and his noisy sister. An excellent one-day-do-it-all-birthday-day. 

Grandma, Craig and Adrienne enjoyed some quiet after the party and sundowners, Deb also stopped by to give Luke a parachute man (I found kids on roof throwing it down to Adam as the sun set) and we all fell into bed early. We have a five year old. Our youngest is five. Yikes.

Couldn't have done it without my mother's help, and here are a few special pics from the week, including break duty at Jessica's school and the wonderful skylights that we put in.

Granny checking out skylight in Luke's room.
We keep trying to turn the light off and then
 realising that actually, it's the skylight.
What a difference this has made to a dark and
gloomy south-facing room!

Break duty

What visit with Granny would be complete without ice cream?