last day of bowling

i've been preparing hayden for the fact that bowling is coming to an end. i think he believed that for the rest of his life he would be going bowling every thursday. he took it fairly well and yesterday was the last day of hayden's bowling league. they had a big party for the kids and they were able to bowl 2 games (well, 1 1/2 since it takes SO LONG with kids this age) they had pizza, they were given goodie bags with candy and before we left they handed out trophies.
when we got out of the car hayden said "i can't wait to eat pizza! my stomach is growling!" this was note worthy because hayden doesn't like real food. not even pizza which most kids his age enjoy. we got into the bowling alley and he was so excited to see that it was decorated with balloons.
dave left work early so that he could come up and be a part of hayden's last day. it was the best day for him to attend since hayden had a record breaking score. his highest score before yesterday was 102. his average has been around 81 or 82. yesterday, his first game, he got 3 spares and ended up with a score of 107. he ended up not doing that well for the second game but he did end up getting a strike before they turned the lanes off once the pizza arrived.
hayden actually sat with some other kids and ate almost an entire piece of pizza. it was amazing. more amazing then the 107 he bowled.
hayden is quite the little encourager. he made some friends during the past 15 weeks (two of the are the kids of a girl that i went to high school with ironically) and he always the first to cheer them on and give high fives when a strike or spare is bowled.
i went back and forth as to if i should sign him up for the next session or if we should take a break and sign up the next time. his teacher told me that day that every thursday hayden would announce to everybody that he has bowling tonite. if it's a tuesday, he'll announce he only has 2 more days until bowling. he loves it. it gets us out of the house and gives us something to do once a week so i figured we'd sign up for the next session starting february 7th. this way it will get us through the winter months and leave our summer open to do other things if we want. he was so excited to hear that he'd be going back for more bowling in just 3 more weeks.
before we left they called each child up one at a time by name and gave them a trophy that even had their name engraved on it. hayden was so excited to get his very own bowling trophy. he even posed for a few pictures with it.
3 more weeks and we'll be back at it again.


on his way to 107:
his "i missed the last 2 pins" dance:
dave and talan were happy to be there too. you can even kind of see talan's teeth:
hayden eating pizza!:
the trophy ceremony:
he loves it:
devon, nathan and hayden after getting their trophies:
hayden, jonathan, isreal and david:
the trophy:

5 year photos

on december 28th i took hayden to have his five year pictures taken. there were many threats to make him behave as he's usually really bad at getting his picture taken. the threats seemed to work as he did whatever the photographer asked him to do and we were out of there in no time.
hayden is at the stage that he usually smiles "silly" at the camera, but even when he tries to smile normal it comes out all goofy looking cuz he just doesn't know how to smile on command. he did pretty well with these pictures though. i was quite impressed.
here they are:

what are big brothers for?!

this is what hayden did to talan yesterday. uh oh.....

number five is alive

december 30, 2007, hayden michael skiver turned 5 years old. i can't believe it's been five years since he was born. time goes by so quickly, even some days when you're thinking how slow it's going.
hayden came out fast and furious early that morning back in 2002 and that's pretty much been the last five years of his life as well.
each year on his birthday i have thought to myself "i honestly can't believe we've made it to his birthday." i mean, i haven't ever kept a plant alive more than a few months. so to realize that i've kept this human alive for 5 years is pretty incredible to me. he obviously is quite a bit more self sufficient than he was 5 years ago, so i don't have to really worry about forgetting to feed him or anything like that. now each year it's a shocker that he's still alive because i haven't purposely killed him.
because hayden's birthday is so close to christmas i make sure to make a big deal about his birthday. it is not linked to christmas in the least and he will never grow up saying that he feels cheated out of a birthday. well, i guess he could say that but he'd be a liar.
each year we choose a theme. his first birthday was bathtime complete with rubber duck cakes. his second birthday was baby einstein with the caterpillar cake from the baby einstein movies. his third birthday was thomas the train where he had not only a thomas cake but also a percy AND james cake. his fourth birthday was mickey mouse since he was into the mickey mouse clubhouse show and we had just gone to disney world. he had a mickey, donald and pluto cake.
for his fifth birthday we decided a bowling theme would be perfect since he has been on a bowling league which will wrap up in just a few weeks (he's currently in first place, by the way). i made a bowling ball and 4 knocked down bowling pins for his cake this year.
we had a bit of a problem with the 3-d ball cake as it started sliding and falling apart about 2 hours before the party. we brought new definition to "carrot cake" as we shoved a few baby carrots under the cake and frosted them in order to prop it up. luckily the cake make it through the party and looked half way decent at least. nobody even knew about the carrots until after the fact. and once everyone had gone home, jessica and tina decided to be classy as usual and make things out of the cake and carrots that are unspeakable....although we did take pictures, one of which is below. it's pretty gross though so you may want to skip that one.
dave, myself, hayden and talan partied down with mom, dad and jessica, jenn and rainah, tina (teens), melanie and ashton howard, ashton's cousin trenton and hayden's grandma skiver. he opened presents (he even opened MOST of the cards and let me read who they were from) ate cake and ice cream at the kid table while talking about burps and farts with the other boys, went bowling with his new bowling set, played hide and seek with ashton and trent and just had a great time.
he got tons of great stuff, some of which included a webkinz puppy, several books, moon sand, an mp3 player which he LOVED as soon as he realized thomas music was coming out of it, and a brand new big boy bike. he hopped right on the bike and started riding around the basement right away. and it only took about 3 times of running into the cd wall before he figured out how to use the brakes.
he kept saying "this is the best birthday ever!" although i understand he says that about everything, but i still think it was up there for him.
thank you to everyone that came out to help us celebrate and for all the great presents. so far being 5 has really treated us all quite well. hayden has had a record breaking 3 days in a row of being extremely well behaved even though sleep schedules have been insane during the holidays. we wish he would have turned 5 sooner if this is how it's gonna be!


the set up:
hayden's own bowling alley:
party favors in mini bowling ball bags and bowling pin cups:
the cakes:
i hate that ball:

hayden helping out with the punch:

the spread:
the opening begins:
he doesn't hear "no" from me enough so he got a they might be giants cd telling him "no":
not sure what the tongue thing was about:
what is this thing?!:
he still isn't sure what an mp3 player is, but it's playing thomas music so that's good enough for him:
he takes after his father with his love for legos:
new leapster video games:
the new bike and the mp3 player:

at first he used the cd wall as his brakes:
happy birthday to you!:
this is what jessica and tina did after the party had ended. they are disgusting: