It Can't Be

5. Holy moly I have a 5 year old.

On April 24th Brady, my precious baby boy turned 5 years old. Sniff sniff. To say he was excited about turning 5 is an understatement. This kid was beyond thrilled! We've been counting down for at least 365 days, haha!

Sadly, Brian had to work all day on Brady's actual birthday so celebrated the Thursday before. We met Brian after work and went to Red Robin for dinner. Along with 20 other people celebrating their birthdays as well. I guess that's the place to go?

After that it was home for some cake and presents. He looks way too old here, make it stop!!

Presents!

It's tough being the little sister and having it not be your birthday. Luckily she only has to wait 3 weeks until it's her turn.

His cake was pretty neat!

Putting this sweet boy to bed for the last time as a 4 year old. Cue all of the tears.

I was going to go all out with crepe paper and balloons on his door but he gets up sometimes to go potty in the middle of the night and I didn't want to freak him out. So just a little crepe paper was sufficient.

Pancakes for breakfast with a candle in them of course.

Brady's 1 request for his birthday was going to this indoor playground place called Monkey Bizness. It's a shame they didn't have any fun at all.

After Monkey Bizness we headed to Chick Fil A for some lunch with friends. They had a blast but sadly I didn't think to take any pictures!  After that it was home for naps and both kids crashed hard. Brady hasn't napped in forever but the excitement of being 5 got to him I guess. The sweetest moment happened too...he woke up from his nap and he'd had a bad dream so I picked him up and rocked him and he fell asleep while I was holding onto him. I cried (shocking, I know). He may be big (and really hard to rock these days) but he's still my baby and always will be.

After naps I told Brady he could choose anything he wanted for dinner. He chose to dress up (his choice: button down shirt with several buttons unbuttoned and black windpants. Watch out ladies, haha!) and wanted to eat pizza at Old Chicago.

The entire restaurant sang to him. He was a mixture of elated and embarrassed. Layla was over it.

Later that night we skyped and talked with family, opened more gifts, and played with said gifts. It was a pretty great birthday for him.

Brian was working a flying competition all weekend long so we snuck up there on Saturday to watch some of the competition and to see him.

Later in the day we got to go to the awards banquet. It was fun getting to see Brian talk and hand out awards. I sure love that man.

Love my boys!

And for the fun of reminiscing...

Brady at birth 

Brady at 1

Brady at age 2 (yep this is how most of that year was!)

Brady at age 3

Brady at age 4

aaand Brady at age 5. Time can stand still now, thanks!

And The Worst Blogger Award Goes To....

Me. Totally me. It's not that I don't have things to blog about it's just time and ambition to do so. I feel like I sit down at the computer and the kids decide then that they "NEED A SNACK", the dog decides he needs to go out and bark at every little thing, the washer always beeps, Layla just needs to snuggle, or dinner needs to be started. And I know some of that could be avoided if I just set aside time when they were asleep to blog but that's my sit on the couch and do absolutely nothing, clean the house, work, read a book, or browse the interwebs on my phone time. So yeah, I need to work on it. 

So we've been busy lately. I feel like the second we stepped out of the car from Arizona life has just been going at warp speed. April and May always seem to be crazy insane months and this year is no different. I'm sure you're just dying to know what we've been up to so here ya go, I'm going to lay it all out. Here's what we've been up to the past 16 days or so (brace yourself, it's a long one):

Remember this mustache? Gosh it's horrible. I mean he does it every year/deployment but it never gets any cuter.

But thankfully April came and it was time for it to go. 

The kids were so, so sad so they gave daddy's mustache a goodbye kiss (is this even weirder?).

I happily documented it from the top of the tub while the kids watched every hair go bye bye.

AND IT'S GONE! So glad to have my cute husband back.

Oh yeah and then there was Easter time. We celebrated the day before by going to the Air Force Academy's Easter celebration.

My kids are TERRIFIED of characters.  But they both decided they wanted to be brave and take a picture with the Easter bunny. Big steps, big steps! Maybe next time we can get real smiles and not "we're scared out of our minds" smiles.

Easter egg hunt time. Brady was super pumped. We didn't hear the fire truck make noise signaling the start of the egg hunt. Mass parents, mass little kids, and mass chaos. 

Layla, not so excited. 

We got like 2 eggs and it was super madness. And they decided to do ages 0-4 all in one sweep. Big mistake. Complete chaos.

But nothing some free cotton candy couldn't fix!

And a good ol firetruck too.

They even had train rides which made everything all good!

And Brady even rolled in a giant hamster ball.

Another character and you want your picture taken again? Now you're just showing off!

And to close out the Academy's easter egg hunt? Some petting zoo action where Layla almost got trampled but a llama.

 She also decided she wanted a miniature horse. Me too, Layla, me too.

And that brings us to Easter Sunday. It was a beautiful morning and I'm still training for my half marathon (I'll talk more about that later if you stick around) and I ran a good 5 mile beautiful run before church.

I get home, shower, get the kids bathed, and I walk downstairs yelling to the kids to get their shoes on. And then I see them both, in their nice Easter best, with markers ALL OVER THEIR FACES. You guys, I couldn't believe it. They have never done that and they chose Easter Sunday to draw all over themselves and each other (oh yeah they tried writing their names on the back of each other's necks. I can't make this stuff up). I was livid. "Be like, Jesus, think like Jesus." We were on a super tight schedule and because of the 20 minutes it took to wipe the marker off of them we missed church. I was not pleased. But Easter must go on!

I told them they owed me good pictures because I was NOT a happy mama.

They're lucky we got all of the marker off. 

Soo after we got them cleaned up and the shock of missing church wore off we headed over to a friend's house for some Easter brunch.

They had an Easter egg hunt and the kids were ready for it this time!

So many eggs!

Trying to butter mom up I think by being sweet with each other.

After brunch we hurried home to sneak in a little naptime. Then it was off to our squadron's get together where I took zero pictures. 

And then to finish off Easter we did some Disney on Ice.  Brian and I were so exhausted we were trying our best not to fall asleep. But the kids loved it and that's all that matters!

OH and what else are we doing?

Brady started up soccer again

which he absolutely loves.

And Layla is doing gymnastics again.

Brady had his 5 year well check and is going to be 5 next week (WHAT?!). Let me just say the 4 shots were rough and he's had some weird side effects from them. I'll post more about that next week!

I took the kids to see Home (pretty cute but not the best ever).

I'm planning their 5th and 3rd birthday party which is Royal themed. We have a lot of family and guests coming so that's been keeping me busy too!

Brady got his chance to bring the Fuzzy Duckling home from preschool as well. And today when we brought it back apparently the Fuzzy Duckling needed Mommy's cell phone too. So I frantically searched for my phone while it was just hanging out at preschool. Hope the kids enjoyed my pictures!

I have 5 and a half weeks until my half marathon. I've been trying to keep up with my running as much as possible. Tuesday night I did 8 miles and while I was running it wasn't too horrible. 

But once I stopped running, oh I was in pain. Our neighborhood is so dang hilly and my legs just scream after my long runs. Don't worry, no food was ruined in the rapid icing of my legs. All is good now.

And finally, I'm leaving tomorrow for a high school friend's wedding in the Outer Banks. I'm meeting two really good friends in Norfolk and then we're driving to Corolla, NC. I'm super excited for a girls weekend and some fun but I'm already getting sad thinking of spending 4 days and 3 nights away from my babies. And Brian too of course. Check out my instagram for trip pictures! Once I get back I'll try and blog more regularly (I always say that, I know but I'm going to try!). Hope everyone had a great weekend and if you got through this post, I'm impressed! :)