Bjarki’s 5th Birthday!

When the kids were both awake, we summoned them into our room, where Bjarki got to open his first present.

Mindful of how Bjarki only has one costume to call his own, we gave him a fireman’s outfit he loved at the Children’s Discovery Museum in California.

He was a little ambivalent about it, wanted ‘toys’ and thought it was waaay too big, but then we got it on him, and I’m happy I didn’t get a size smaller. At this size, this outfit should last him for the next few years.

Downstairs, doing a wee bit of modeling for the big camera. Note the hands in pocket, and attempt at grown-up face.

Hello Mr. Smile! 🙂

When Bjarki arrived back from daycare at 5 pm, his classmates started arriving for his birthday-party. Since Bjarki spends most of his waking hours with these guys, he wasn’t all too excited to go play with them, and probably would have preferred if they just dropped off some presents and left him to play with new toys! But we told him that 5 year olds have to obey birthday-party-rules, and play with the guests, and that the toys were off-limits until they were all gone. Poor bugger!

Newest incarnation of my bi-annual quest to make a decent chocolate cake. This one was ok, although a little dry because the icing went on way late. Also, next year I’ll try to remember (again) that sticking the smarties on their side makes for easier lettering… 🙂

The internet is a marvelous place! 🙂

Hardly any of these got eaten, but they were fun to make! 🙂

Thankfully, today was absolutely gorgeous, and pretty warm to boot. This meant the boys could go out to play on the playground opposite our house. Which was really great because ten out of sixteen showed up, which is a pretty good turn-out for a mid-summer birthday-party. 🙂

Did I mention the playground is right outside our house? 🙂

The most popular activity involved level tire-swings that were wound up to spin fast when released. I figured this was much less dangerous than the high-velocity back-and-forth swinging the girls had started out doing.

Not everybody came out to play, these four guys decided to hang out in Bjarki’s room to try out new toys. 🙂

The kids kept playing until pizza showed up shortly after 6 pm.

Mmmm… piiiizzzza! We extended our table to fit thirteen kids by adding our new Ikea garden table. 🙂

The other side. How daycare deals with all these kids and more is beyond me. 🙂

Soon it was time to sing Happy Birthday…

… and blow out some candles! 🙂

For dessert, everybody got a frozen lolly.  We kept them all outside until each respective parents showed up to claim a kid or two, at which point they departed with a kinder-egg – because, sigh, departure-gifts have apparently become the norm in Iceland now too…