Last Day as a 4 Year Old

Last year, I started celebrating Jacob's last day of being "x" age before his birthday - basically an excuse for me to get some alone time around his birthday every year and have some one-on-one time during such a chaotic time. I'll start the same thing with Joshua when he is about to turn four - the same time I started it with Jacob. 

Thursday morning we met our best friends for a park play date, and then lunch and play time at their house. We pulled up in the parking lot and the park was PACKED. Some daycare or preschool was having their celebration there, so we played on a different area for a while until the main playground started clearing out. 

Trying to get all of the kids in one picture is impossible...missing Oscar here.

 I love seeing the friendship between Miles and Jacob. Miles was Jacob's very first friend ever - they first "played" together when Jacob was just like nine months old, and now they make up their own games, go off together at the park and talk about their video games on the picnic table, and make us laugh like crazy.

 We drove home so Bob could watch Joshua while Jacob and I took our date night. Jacob always picks Moe's if he can pick where to eat. Here are some ninja faces of the almost-five-year-old.

 And then we went to Toys R Us to spend some birthday money. He was so funny about picking his toy this year. He was close to picking up many things, but wanted to keep looking at his options before deciding. When he found these costumes for ninja turtles he was set. He picked Leonardo for himself, and then said he needed to get one for Joshua so they could fight together. So, Joshua scored himself a Donatello outfit. Then, when we were checking out they gave Jacob a balloon. When we walked out the door, he said, "I hope this balloon doesn't fly off into the sky like it did last year." I totally forgot that last year the knot the lady tied wasn't strong enough and the balloon flew off when we hit the parking lot and we had to go back in and get a new one. Jacob has always had such an amazing memory, but this truly amazed me. And, whenever he asks me when something happened, if I tell him maybe when he was two or three, he will tell me it must have been when he was two, because he remembers three, haha.

 Joshua was cracking us up like crazy. We had to tuck his shirt in so he could store his stick in the back without it falling out. He kept doing this move and saying, "Purple One!"

After the boys played for a while, Bob took Jacob out to buy him his very first baseball glove. What a wonderful day to end one amazing year for Jacob. He has come a long way in one year, and I am so proud of him!