Dude's First Day of Spring

The day when we kiss Winter goodbye and welcome in the lovely, flowery, warm winded season of Spring is always charming for me on so many levels.  Just the idea that we're nearing the end of ice, back breaking shoveling, puffy winter coats in non puffy car seats, forcing hats on non-conforming babies, cabin fever, colds and puke, darkness before 4:30pm, colds and puke (yes, I do realize I mentioned that twice) is enough to put a smile on this Mama's face.  Especially since this year's "first day of Spring" equaled my Dude's 5th birthday.  2 reasons to celebrate.  And that we did.

Pinterest has given me inspiration beyond logical explanation over the past couple months. In fact, I plan to do an entire post solely on my obsession with the idea-inducing virtual playground. Anyway, we hung streamers over Dude's door the night before and threw 15 balloons in his room. Idea being, when he woke up, he would be in a magic birthday land of every five year old's dreams. What really happened is he battled through the "magic" and came into our room at 6:00am, crying about how scary his bedroom was. Bomb. I laid in bed with him and slowly convinced him of the magic. Eventually, he conformed.
 

He took his rad fish cupcakes to day care and we celebrated with dinner out at Panera (not our original plan, but the inch of dust caking our entire house after a garage contractor installed a new floor changed our "breakfast for dinner" plans).  A story for another day.  Following dinner we hid all his presents around the house in the form of a scavenger hunt, which was a hit.  He ended the hunt with his very best present of the day, the Astronaut Costume from Grandma V and Grandpa Marc.  Needless to say, Duder was quite spoiled for the big 5. 

Below is a video for Dude's biggest fans (meaning, grandparents mainly).  I don't expect most of you to dedicate 5ish minutes of your life to watching his scavenger hunt recap, but he is pretty darn cute if you so choose. 

I apologize in advance, but Dude's actual kid party has yet to take place, so there will be yet another post dedicated to my son turning five, following Saturday's Wildlife Detective birthday extravaganza.  I'm beginning to think that perhaps I'm a bit overzealous in the recognition of birthdays department.  Just a little.