Everything old is new again

Tuesday was Nolan’s 5th birthday (wow!).

He celebrated more of a “birthday season” this year with not one, not two, but three birthday events spread out over two weeks.

Every year the Great Escape hosts a “media day” where members of the media and their families get free admission to the park. For the past few years, media day has landed on or near Nolan’s birthday. So we planned to take him and one of his friends to the amusement park for his birthday.

But then media day turned out to be more than two weeks before his birthday this year. We decided to use it to celebrate anyway and even had a birthday cake ordered and waiting for us for lunch.

This past Sunday we had my mom and my sister’s fmaily over for dinner and yet another birthday cake.

Then on Tuesday we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner. I’ve heard parents tell nightmarish tales of this place, but it really isn’t so bad if you go on a weeknight.

Here’s the thing that really blew me away about Nolan’s birthday. So many of his presents were the same kinds of things I loved as a kid.

For starters, his party on Sunday had a Spider-Man theme (my favorite comic book character).

He got a ton of “Star Wars” related presents, including two light sabers, a Darth Vader sprinkler, Vader pajamas and a very cool Millennium Falcon playset.

To top it all off, his friend Danny gave the Season 1 DVD set of their current favorite TV show – “The Dukes of Hazzard” (last night I watched the original pilot episode with commentary from John Schneider and Catherine Bach -- yeehaw!).

So I think it’s safe to say I’ve been enjoying his presents almost as much as he has.