Dan's actual birthday

Dan turned 5 on Friday and started the day with his favorite breakfast: Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Toast (if you don't think that there's a right way and a wrong way to make cinnamon toast, check out her method).  I put one candle in each of his five pieces and he made a wish!  When Ben woke up a few minutes later, I gave them their last birthday presents: one little cactus for each of them.  Where we live is pretty desert-like and they have developed a bit of an obsession with cacti.  In fact, this was probably their favorite present!

Dan headed off to school with treats for all of his classmates--sprinkle donuts cut in half.  He said they were a big hit!  It's kind of a lot of pressure to have the first two birthdays of the year, but luckily for the other moms, I have set the bar pretty low.  He had a good day at school and then came home for lunch and rest.

After naps, my grand plan was to have a sitter for Hannah so I could take Dan and Ben to the Safari Park to ride the hot air balloon (minimum age is 3 years old, so the baby couldn't come).  The sitter came over and we headed out around 4:00 on an extremely hot and humid day.  When we got to the Park, we headed straight for the hot air balloon (Dan figured out his surprise on the way over) only to find out that it was not running because of high winds at altitude.  Too bad none of those winds were on the ground because it was HOT.  After a very small outburst ("My birthday is RUINED!"), Dan bounced back and we walked around to some of our favorite spots at the Park.  The highlight was definitely seeing the giant male lion on top of the Range Rover, trying to rest and stay cool.  I wish we could have seen him climbing up there!

To finish the day, the boys ate and played at Chick-Fil-A.  We wish Zach could have been here to join in on the fun, but we had a good day anyway.  I'm happy that Dan and Ben are 5 and 3 and very happy that the next birthday isn't until April!

Another time....