Happy Birthday, Henri! It's the big Five without an O

Partayyy! Henri got to celebrate his birthday today. But let's start at the beginning, which was Thursday, his actual birthday...

Dad was overseas, but that didn't stop that day from being glorious, wonderful and filled with an abundance of gifts and presents and food.

Big brother Karl was recruited/allowed to collaborate on the construction of elaborate Lego contraptions.

Today's festivities started with healthy helpings of not quite that healthy foods (yes, we put up the vegetables and fruits mainly for show, but the fruits actually went).

Snacks and drinks were followed by a showing of Karl's and dad's original puppet play "Kasperl und die Jagd nach der goldenen Kugel" ....

...which told the story of old time favorite folk hero Kasper falling asleep while guarding the king's magic golden ball, a temporary lapse in judgement ruthlessly taken advantage of by the great robber Hotzenplotz (stage design courtesy of mom)...

...Kasperl then has to embark on a great odyssey through the deep and dark woods, where he encounters numerous animals, who first want to eat him, but then are soooo scared, when they hear just the uttering of the name Hotzenplotz, that they rather help than devour Kasperl. As you can see, the audience was captivated.

In the end Kasperl finds the robber and defeats Robber Hotzenplotz - yay! But here's the catch - he didn't find the golden ball, which the robber had hidden somewhere in the vicinity.

Everybody got to design their own monster bag for the robber's loot of toys and candy to be won or found on the way.

Followed by a parcours of challenges the boys faced throughout the house. Like numerous rounds of the popular "stop dance" (everybody gets to dance, but when the music stops, everybody has to freeze, the last one to do so is out).

A big hit was the bowling tournament. Especially since there were only winners.

The biggest winner of them all of course was Henri, who gave the party numerous thumbs ups, before both brothers crashed happily exhausted into very deep sleep.