October Sky

Last Saturday brought an afternoon from heaven for Brighton’s 5th birthday party. There was not one cloud in the sky and if the sun hadn’t been shining so, Brighton’s perpetual grin would have done the job just fine. He was joined at the park by 8 of his buddies who brought their Dads along just in case they needed some help putting together their Estes rocket. Little did we know, we had invited the rocket wizard, a.k.a. Brett Austin. All went without a hitch at the assembly table.

To my surprise and relief, Brighton requested a chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Since I didn’t have to attempt the caramel icing this year, I didn’t lose a wink of sleep nor did I have to stock up on ingredients to re-make 3 and 4 batches. The only thing I missed was the taste of it in my mouth! (Mom?!?)

(The stress free cake and the 5 year old reaction to the Birthday tune. Every year is different!)

As the theme from Star Wars filled the park, each little guy waited patiently, kind of, for his turn to launch his own rocket. The kids took turns counting down to “blast off” over the loud speaker which turned out to be a most coveted job. Sometimes the numbers were a little off but everyone at least knew “3-2-1- BLAST OFF!!” Once the button was pressed and the rockets were launched, they zoomed higher than I thought possible for eight bucks a piece. The boys recovered all of them after first learning to run with their necks craned upward towards a rapidly and randomly descending target. You would have thought someone had spiked their Capri Suns. Any onlooker that didn’t see the rockets would have been extremely concerned.

The girls he "allowed" at his "boy party". He was pretty happy about it.

How is it that when I downloaded these pictures the night of the party, I couldn't believe how "five" he looked??