Happy Easter, Happy Birthday!

He is Risen!

Jonathan requested pancakes in the shape of crosses for his birthday breakfast. (He also badly wanted to wear "pants with Easter eggs and crosses all over them!" but sadly(?) we didn't have that available.)



My garden yielded our Easter flowers. The arrangement turned out oddly Lenten. Oh well, they're still beautiful!!



We're off to church to celebrate Christ's resurrection! Afterward the children will hunt for eggs and stuff themselves with an unreasonable amount of sugar. :) Then home for naps and an Easter dinner extraordinaire. It is going to be a lovely day.

He is Risen, indeed!

Happy Birthday, Thomas!

Look who is FIVE years old today!



He requested Mickey Mouse pancakes for breakfast.




And apparently this present was "just exactly the set that I always wanted!"



Lego is Thomas' favorite thing right now. He enjoys building with them, and he loves setting up little worlds for his people and imagining adventures for them.





Actually, once the first part of the set was built, he handed the rest of the building off to Jonathan and happily played with the people and coach!



Thomas is growing up so much right now. Until recently, my middle boy has been extremely worried about going anywhere without me, refused to be left in his class during church, and preferred to play alone rather than interact with people. Yet in the past month or so he has started asking for play dates with friends and is comfortable running down to visit neighbor kids without me coming with him. I'm glad he's finding his comfort zone with people, and I'm glad we let him arrive there in his own time and on his own terms.

Happy Birthday, my dear little introvert. We love you so very much.

Newly minted 4 year old!

Can you believe that our Thomas is FOUR??



Note the gum in his mouth. In our family, four-year-olds get to chew gum. He's been chewing NON-STOP since the magic day.

Thomas' birthday dinner request was "strawberry cake with strawberries on top", along with Green Mac 'n Cheese. We realized at dinner that we'd inadvertently created a green dinner and a red dessert. The boys thought that was awesome.



Yes, there are five candles on this cake. When I was little we always had an extra candle "to grow on" and I thought it would be fun to re-instate the tradition. Now if I can just remember it next birthday...!



I used this recipe for the cake, substituting whole wheat pastry flour (sifted, minus 2T per cup) and evaporated cane juice for the sugar. Did you know that you can make powdered sugar in a vitamix? The cake was delicious. I think we could have quite happily eaten the whole thing that night. (We did display some self control - we only ate half of it.) :)

Two special gifts, from Grandmommy and Granddad: a fighter plane piloted by...Woody. He's having a blast with his new toys!



Happy Birthday, Thomas! We sure do love you!