Zavion is FIVE!

 

It is SO hard for me to believe that my little man has turned five. Luckily, being on vacation on his actual birthday helped distract me from it a little, but I still find myself feeling wistful thinking of him as a little baby coming home from the hospital.
And, of course this milestone birthday required a big ol' birthday bash (well, that's pretty much how we do things around here anyway!), so as soon as we got back from our trip, I got to work on his party. Since, I'm a bit of a bargainer, I try to create as many of my own party things as possible. I also love the satisfaction I feel when I've created a party from scratch. And, I'm pretty confident in my craftiness that I usually accomplish what I set out to do. ;o) Luckily I had made most of the decorations before we left on vacation, so I just had a few things left to finish when we got back.
This year's party theme, as chosen by Mr. Zavion himself, was 'Monster Bash.' He's now old enough where he, not only, got to pick out a theme (before you go thinking I was brave letting him decide, you should know that he was given several to choose from...lol) but even made some suggestions about activities. He was very set on having apple bobbing, and I thought that sounded liker a perfect Fall birthday party activity. He also wanted to know if there would be dancing... Dancing? What, is he five or 15? Haha! But, I decided if my boy wanted to dance, there would be dancing! So, I kind of restructured the musical chairs, aka 'Monster Mash' game I had planned, so the kids could dance until the music stopped (instead of the traditional walking in a circle around the chairs) than sit down.
So, the day of the party came and Z was very excited. He made sure to wear his new monster shirt that Grandma bought him and planted himself in front of the window to wait for the guests.
Once everyone arrived, he truly was the king of the party! He loves any kind of social gathering anyway, but anything where the focus is all on his, is just heaven in his book!
After everyone had eaten, we started on the activities. Z turned out to be surprisingly good at apple bobbing and was very proud of himself at how well he did. Then we moved onto monster bingo, which the kids loved (especially since Colin decided they could use candy corn as markers, which meant big piles of candy just sitting there in front of them...). We played a few games of that, than let the kids get crafty by making their own monster masks.
After that, it was Z's favorite party activity of all; blowing out his birthday candles! In fact, he was so excited that he didn't even let us finish signing 'Happy Birthday' to him before he blew out his candles. Silly guy!
After all the kids finished their cupcakes and were sufficiently tinted green (gotta love those store-bought cupcakes!) it was on to presents!
This is probably Z's second favorite birthday party activity, not so much because of the gifts, but because he gets everyone's full attention on him for a lengthy period of time...hahaha! He got some pretty awesome gifts, including some cool Hot Wheels cars and tracks, the pair of overalls he had been begging for for a month, a Bop It and a microscope. He was very happy with everything and was very happy with the day in general. He went to sleep very quickly that night too, exhausted after a long day of birthday fun!