Happy Birthday Eli

I have not done our official Birthday photo shoot yet, I will get to it soon,  because so often those picture are my favorites!

Eli,
Mommy and daddy are proud of you. We love you, and we will always love you. You have many good family members who love you also, we are blessed at this time in our lives to be so close to so many of them. They love you also. We all want you to succeed in life, and we know you will! You will succeed because you don't give up! You tell me all the time " I wont give up mom!", you also remind me that you " can do hard things!". I am so glad you are willing to work and keep trying , because that is so very important in this life!
You start Kindergarten this year! I cant believe how big you have grown. You are my oldest, which also means that you are the baby who made me a mother. Thank you for coming down first. I know that being the oldest can be hard sometimes. Life gets hard a lot! If you ever feel frustrated, you can come talk to me, I am always here to support and help you.  As you go to school and do more things outside the home, you will have questions about things. Come and talk to me and your dad, we want to help you and teach you, we have been 5 before so we can help!
We have tried to teach you things to help keep you safe , because we love you, mommy and daddy can't always protect you from everything but we wish we could. Always talk to us about anything, you will never be in trouble for coming to us with anything that ever concerns or confuses you.

You are a son of God Eli! I hope you realize how wonderful that is. Not only do you have a loving family here on earth but you have a perfectly kind and loving Eternal Father who loves you, he will never forsake you!

Eli I want to say again how proud of you I am. I see how hard you try, and I see how sweet your temperament is. You have strong opinions but that is a good thing and one of the many things I love about you! Stay yourself! Never feel like you are anythings less than wonderful! Life is full of trials and sad things, but we do not have to be sad or ashamed. We can be happy!

I hope you had a very happy birthday and that you have nothing but wonderful experiences all year! I am so glad I get to be right here to be your mom and watch your life unfold!
I love you son,
 Mommy

Eli's 5th birthday Party!

Each year we do celebrate birthdays and sometimes we invite friends and family.
But this year was Eli's 5th.
A Big deal in our family circles.
5 is the end of preschool years and the hello school and testing and more responsibilities and more complicated social interactions and ..... I am getting emotional. Anyways in our family the BIG years are 1,5,8,12,16,and of course the year they graduate 18.
 So we threw a BIG party! (well big for us)
Eli choose a theme and we sent invites to everyone in his preschool class and some other friends and family.
It was a very busy weekend (Easter weekend) so most people could not come but Eli had so much fun and we had a good turnout! I would have loved for him to have more people there but truth be told , I think anymore would have stressed me out!
We got decorations and Eli requested a Store bought cake, we played a few games and had a pinata we opened gifts and sang to him.
He told me later that pin the hat on the minion game was his favorite part of the party. Kayden liked aiming the foam rockets at the minion posters best.
I always love watching the little kids get the pinata (that is probably why my kids get pinatas at so many birthdays!). I was SO glad that my parents, brother and sister with her family could be there. it really felt special for cousins to come since cousins live so far away.
We love our big boy and hope he had a great time!