Six Years Young

In keeping with the plan of one more kindergarten year, I thought it would be fun to make Spencer's sixth birthday a celebration of being little.  So after an afternoon of fun and games with Gma and Gpa, and Julie and Whit,

Spencer opened his gifts from Lucy and me -- gifts that were kind of like presents, but more like a plan...

...to turn our backyard into Neverland!  Each package contained supplies to create an important piece of the imaginative puzzle.  There was paper to make treasure map invitations...a black plastic table cloth and a paintbrush to paint up a pirate flag... some simple decorations for Mermaid Lagoon...you get the idea...and so did he.

Over the next couple of weeks we had so much fun putting everything together.

The only thing I forgot to account for was that Spencer would want to be Peter.  Duh.  

I guess I just figured he'd choose to be a pirate or an indian or something we already had a costume for.  

Coming up with a Peter Pan hat was the only thing that had me scrambling last minute.  But I found an old green sweatshirt that lent it's hood to the cause. A few minutes and one red feather later and, viola!  We had ourselves a pretty shoddy Peter Pan hat that Spencer loved with all his heart!

(I would cut up a million hoodies in exchange for the exuberance he showed toward that makeshift hat!)  

The party was sincerely so fun.  But I think what I loved best were all the little moments of creation and conversation ("maybe we could...!") that Lucy and Spencer and I shared in preparation.  I guess if the coming years bring more and more of this kind of collaboration together, then growing up won't be all that bad =).