Joe is a "one hander"

Joe and Emma eating rice krispie treats in front of the monkeys. I think it is where they belong most of the time.


I remember when I turned five how excited I was to show how old I was by putting my whole hand up with all fingers showing! Man, I was so BIG! Now it is Joe's turn. He is so excited to say that he is five and show his whole hand. He also couldn't wait to be the birthday boss. He would tell Emma, "Now you have to do whatever I say because I am the birthday boss. If I say you can't play with any of my toys then you can't!" But luckily there is something called mothers- they always trump the birthday boss!

He had a fun day. We met Jenny and Lars at the Zoo. It happened to be a free day that day and was totally packed. (I think I opt for paying next time just to avoid the fiasco of the parking alone!) Ti woke up sick that morning and I almost called it off. Thanks to some orange medicine called Motrin he was fine enough to be bullying the birthday boy so I thought he was fine enough to be in school. So I took Ti to school and we were off to the zoo. I had to park quite a ways from the zoo (so did Jenny!) and by the time I made it there we only had about 2 hours. Luckily we had Jenny, the expert zoo navigator, and we made it through the zoo and only missed a few exhibits. Mind you, some of those exhibits were viewed as we were racing by telling the kids to hurry and wave at whatever animal was a blur. Lars wasn't feeling too well (again thanks to Motrin- we're not worthy!!!) and to top it off he fell out of the wagon and ended up with a nice shiner! But Joe was so glad that he came to the zoo anyway. Lars gave Joe a sonic gift card. Lars could have given him a million dollars and it wouldn't have meant as much. Sonic is his favorite place to go. He couldn't wait to give the "lady" his card like he was a dad. We had fun having shakes the next day.





We ended the fun day with cake and ice cream with the Niko's. He went to bed all smiles and I guess that is what counts.