Best...day...evar!

My youngest son turned 5 on Tuesday, and boy, what a day! Let me recap it for you, and then you can decide if it's the kind of day you dreamed of when you were under 10 years of age:

Wake up by or before 7am (he was wide freaking awake when my alarm went off at 7:15am). Open your first present of the day - a Webkinz Lava Dragon - and eat two bowls of Fruit Loops, which you personally selected to be your special birthday breakfast treat the day before.

Now that you have enough sugar coursing through your veins to sustain the average teenager for a week, you get to open more presents! First is a special collector's tin with two new Bakugan inside, followed by the just-released Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story for your DS. One "aunt & uncle" sent you $10 cash - maybe you'll play the ponies today?

You are extra smug because your older siblings have to trudge off to Guantanamo Bay - I mean elementary school - for the day, but you don't go to school on Tuesdays. Bonus! So you get to spend your birthday at home with your old man, playing with all your new birthday loot as well as the usual distractions: video games, TV, running around outside, and dreaming up get-rich-quick schemes.

Next, you head off to the local soccer center to have your weekly footie session. You do a good job not picking up the ball with your hands too much, but you are otherwise not focused and really don't have your head in the game. You're kind of tired, a little hungry, and ready to go home NOW.

When you get home, your grandparents show up with a Happy Meal for your lunch. You happily down your chow, show the old peeps your stuff, and yes, open more presents! A Hot Wheel and a Target gift card? Score! When are we going shopping, daddy?

You wear out your grandparents, play a bit more, and then it's time to go fetch big brother & sister from the bus stop. Of course you wear your birthday crown (why yes, you DID celebrate your b-day at school on Monday) and flash your megawatt smile as much as possible.

Time for an after-school snack with the sibs, take in a little more fun, and then head off to Bellevue so the sibs can attend their Tuesday appointment. Your busy day catches up to you finally, as you climb under the chairs and doze off for 10 or so minutes. Daddy wakes you up, but you're not fussy because it is time to go pick up mommy and go to Red Robin's house!

Traffic is a bit sucky, but you cope with it well enough. When you get to RR, your other grandpa is there waiting for you - hooray! You power down a bowl of mac & cheese, mandarin oranges, and a few of daddy's taters (are you gonna eat those fries, dude?) - but no dessert. Say what? Oh yeah, right, you have a Cold Stone ice cream cake waiting at home - schweet!

Triple chocolate death is served (chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate ganache) and a good time is had by all. You open your last round of presents - a LEGO Star Wars tank - and put daddy to work on that bad boy.

Your day ends with you crashed in mommy & daddy's bed, clutching your Lava Dragon, and dreaming LEGO Star Wars and Bakugan dreams. I don't know what else you could have done to top that, except maybe have a Pump It Up or Chuck-E-Cheese party with twenty other screaming 4 and 5 year olds. Heh.

I don't know how he did it, but the little man managed to turn his big day into a 12 to 14 hour nonstop par-tay, complete with multiple present sessions, his favorite meals, and time spent with most of his favorite family members. If I was 5, I like to think I would have enjoyed that day as much as I think my little Taz did.