Q's FIVE!

Quinton Daniel is FIVE!
His actually birthday was yesterday, March 24th. It was a fabulous day! Breakfast with our whole family, church, a few presents when we got home from church, watched a little bit of a movie together during quiet time and then met some fabulous friends for pizza and came home to open presents just the 7 of us!

If Quinton were a Ninja Turtle he would totally be Leonardo.

"Leonardo, he's the leader in blue. Does anything it takes to get his ninjas through..."  That would be a line from the Ninja Turtle song and since our lives revolve around the turtles it would only make sense to describe my oldest as a turtle.

Aunt Jessica painted this picture of Leonardo for Quinton. She's quite the artist!

Quinton really is the leader of our kids. I'm sure that majority of that comes from being the oldest of 5 but he really does a great job of setting the tone for everyone to follow. He genuinely cares for his siblings and makes sure that they are all taken care of and doing well. I love each week at Sunday school he saves a spot for Rex because he knows that Rex won't go to Sunday school without him. He does a great job of coming up with fun games or ideas to play with everyone. I love watching him at church as he leads a group of friends running around. He is so gracious as he helps me around the house. About a week ago I was cleaning up after dinner and he called me into the living room telling me that he had a surprise for me. He had told Rex and Myla that they should surprise me and clean up their toys without being asked. This boy knows my heart!

We went out to pizza with some friends. They have 4 kids that my children just adore, Henry, Jack, Lucy and Claire. They put us in a back room with no other people in sight! The perfect spot for 9 little children! Sunday nights is magic night at the pizza place so we even got our own personal magic show. IT WAS CRAZY! He made them some balloon swords before he left the table. Such a fun time!

 Sweet friends!

 Quinton and Henry in their superhero shirts.

Most of the kids.

Lucy and Myla have become good friends. It's fun to watch them play together. Lucy has two older brothers so she and Myla both know how to interact with the big boys. They put up with being shot by nerf guns while playing house with their babies, they can wrestle and play superheros all while wearing princess gowns.
Love watching them together!

After pizza we hurried home to open presents. Quinton had been so patient all week. My sister's packages arrived earlier in the week and I made him wait until Sunday night to open them so when we walked in he was ready to go. He was so kind to his siblings allowing their little hands to help open all the presents. Birthday are such a hard thing with so many young kids. The concept of celebrating only one person and they are the only one opening presents is difficult. A couple of days before Quinton's birthday Rex suggested bringing up the Christmas tree so that everyone could get presents to open! But like I said, Quinn was so wonderful at sharing the opening and the toys!

Don't worry, we got two nerf guns so that there could be a fair fight! Dan and Quinton were both excited to play with these!

Quinton has decided that his favorite basketball player is Lebron James and since my sister Kelly loves Dwyane Wade (he played for Marquette which is where she went to school) she was excited to get him some official Heat shorts. They are totally awesome!

 Of course no birthday is complete with Ninja Turtle stuff! Thanks Aunt Dana and Uncle Ry!

 They got him some basketball shorts too! Since it's all my boys wear I'm pretty excited about another pair.

 My sweet family of 7!

You may notice that no one is exceptionally happy in these pictures. They are all EXHAUSTED but I wanted a couple of pictures before they crashed so this is what I got.

I am still in total shock that I am the mother of a five year old. Five seems like such a huge milestone. He is so excited to be five years old. He has made some pretty funny comments about being five and how many things he can do now that he is five!

Quinn is truly such a blessing in our lives. I feel honored just to be his momma.

Happy Birthday to my favorite five year old.