Our Big 5 Year Old!

I know I've been terrible at blogging, and as I was looking back at previous posts, it occurred to me that this blogging hiatus I took happened right around the time we started Kindergarten! It's been crazy and busy, but it's been fun! It has just taken a lot of re-prioritizing from myself. When I have 3 loads of laundry waiting to be folded, 2 more than haven't even been cleaned, diapers that need to be stuffed (which I know drives my husband crazy that I don't stay on top of that even though he's so sweet and never says a word,) a shower that needs cleaned, and children that need momma time, sitting down to the computer to write a blog doesn't really seem like the smartest choice. But I do love my blog. And I know there are people out there that like the updates...right?

Anyway, this is supposed to be about Hunter, isn't it?

Well he has been doing SO well with school! It has only been a little under 2 months and it amazes me even to compare his writing skills from the beginning of September until now. He has such better control!
Here's a paper with his name written on it from one of our first days of school.

And here is from a couple weeks ago:

Writing was actually a fight everyday for a while until I showed him his improvement in such a little time. Now he actually enjoys it, and asks to do it even on the weekend! Here is a paper from yesterday. I was so proud of how neat he wrote his R's!

He is doing absolutely amazing with phonics too, and he's starting to try to read anything around the house that he can. We know sight words "the" and "a" and we're just starting to learn our first phonic rules. He is way ahead of our curriculum according to his ability so I am constantly challenging him passed what the curriculum tells me to do. He can already read a simple 4 letter word like "belt" or "must" and I can even say a three letter word, like "can" or "bun" and he will spell it out himself and write it down. He is quite an easy child to teach! He's so smart. We don't have too many lessons left in our Kindergarten math curriculum (because we started that last year) and we should be moving onto 1st grade level math by the beginning of January. He really is doing so well.

And just this past weekend, our big guy turned 5! I cannot believe it has been 5 years already since I became a mom. He is such blessing though and we love him SO much!

His birthday fell on a Saturday this year so we were able to have is party on his actual birthday!

The theme was construction!

I usually get the majority of my birthday ideas from google, but I was especially proud of his invitations because I thought of the idea all on my own. They looked like this on the front:

 And this was the back:

I designed it in Publisher, and printed both sides on orange card stock, cut them, and hot glued them together. Since most of them were hand delivered, I hot glued a Popsicle stick in between them too as a handle. The ones that were mailed didn't get that finishing touch. I can't take credit for the wording on the back. I got that from the internet too.

We got hard hats as party hats for all the kids.

And my kids loved them!

And I made signs to hang all around the house. We had plans to do so much outside with decorating and playing, but Hurricane Sandy had other plans.

This was on the garage since the overhang protected it from the rain,

and Greg hung Caution tape on the mailbox and a couple other places outside.

This was our front door,

And throughout the house were other Construction Zone and Detour signs that I made too but don't seem to have a picture of.

I also put this one on Hunter's door:

This one on the bathroom door:

This was on the door wall since we were originally supposed to do games outside:

This one was on our master bedroom door:

And this was on the back of the front door for when people were leaving:

Greg did the decorating while I ran to the store for a few last items. He did a great job hanging caution tape everywhere! We also had orange cones throughout the house in random places. Here's a couple pictures of his decorating skills:

I tried to make the food as construction themed as possible, along with my "Dig In" sign behind it.

We had Nuts and Bolts and Orange Cones,

and Wrecking Balls.

 And the kids' favor bags were labelled as "Sack Lunches" in brown paper bags.

And the cake was my personal favorite.

It's hard to tell in the pictures, but I excavated a piece off of the cake, flipped it over and set it next to the hole to make it look like the truck was digging a hole. I used crushed Oreos to look like dirt. (All this was another idea from this blog post! But it was fun making it myself. I used her cake recipes too, and they were really good! I only used my own recipe for frosting.)
Hunter loved the cake! I was so glad. :)

 We had lots and lots of people here! There were 18 of his closest friends. :) (That's not including the adults that brought all those friends!)

It was pretty crazy with all those people since we couldn't go outside, but everyone had fun and we all made it out alive with no major injuries.

And funny story. A lot of the kids were playing in Hunter's room during the party. For much of the time, this was happening on one side of the room. (Take note of the crib in the corner of the picture)

And this was happening on the other.

He seriously slept through all the commotion happening right next to him! It cracked me up.

Hunter had such a wonderful time with all of his friends and he is enjoying his new toys.

Thank you everyone who came out to his party and helped make his day so special!