Ahoy Matey!! Cort turns 5!!

Turning 5 was a huge deal to me. I mean, each year it seems crazy for sweet baby to be another year older, you know, we're always wondering where the time went. But 5....5 just seems absolutely crazy. I guess it's for obvious reasons, 5 is the age where he'll go to school...being gone during the better part of the day each day. That just seems crazy to me. But it's more than that. It just seems so old...it takes every last drop of baby out of him( not that there was much left!!). He's becoming more and more into his own. And can I just say, We absolutely adore him....smart, social, creative, sweet, and so silly and funny( that was. He just LOVES life. Everything about it. And he loves living life with others. It's quite infectious and he makes us all slow down and drink life in a bit more!!

Cort wanted to have a pirate party and he wanted so many of his friends. We debated but gave in and let him invite more than one too many kids! To be honest, I figured a good many would have to regret...be we were wrong...20 out of 21 kids came!! It was crazy but really fun!!


We let him open his present early so that we could use it at the party for decoration...a big pirate ship that I forgot to take a picture of all put together.

This year I decided to actually build his cake instead of using a cake pan...it was quite an adventure! He really wanted a pirate ship. Overall it went well....but the cake was a little too light to handle all the icing and decor so it did begin to crack. I was super thankful to Chris and my friend Kelley, who stayed up super late helping me with it. We were afraid it would fall before morning so we woke Cort up to show it to him. He never really full woke to see it though.

When Cohen woke in the middle of the night, I ran into the kitchen assuming it had fallen but it hadn't! We had to use some cookies to prop it that really ended up looking like anchors sort of.





I as afraid to stick candles in it so I just squeezed out some icing on the cake board( the ocean!) and stuck them in that. It was Cort's idea to turn them into turtles.

The cupcakes...

The party was fun and the kids had a lot of fun. We gave them each pirate bandanas( pink for the girls, red for the boys) and eye patches when they came in. And they each got a pirate up to collect all their treasure in. We had 4 activities...pin the flag on the pirate ship, walking the wobbly plank, a pinata, and a modified treasure hunt( it was freezing outside and 20 kids is a bit too much to be roaming our 3 bedroom house!!)

The treasure hunt... we read out riddles that they had to solve and each time they did they got to see another part of the map. The last clue told them all to look in Cort's room for the treasure, where they found a treasure chest full of gold beads.

The Pinata...

Opening presents...
Eating cake...



I some how missed getting pics of the pin the flad and walking the plank. We also had fun little snacks with name cards....gold coins( banana chips) , cannon balls( grapes) , swords( pretzel sticks), etc.....