Dear Charlie,
How many birthday celebrations does it take to celebrate a fifth birthday? What a silly question to ask…Five, of course!
Birthday #1
Celebrated with a fruit tart, courtesy of RJ, Vicki, and Rohan who spent a couple of days with us in Aptos for our first annual family summer vacation.
Birthday #2
Celebrated with a chocolate cake provided by Grandma Madeline who visited us in Aptos to celebrate your birthday. She gave you a deck of UNO Spiderman cards (which you loved, loved, loved but has now disappeared), some metallic pencils (with which you drew a bunch of robots), a walkie talkie set, and an alphabet train puzzle.
Birthday #3
Celebrated at the Arlington Park with your five special guests (Sophia, Ella, Elijah, Neighbor Jack, Desi, Zoe, and Maia). 
Your Papa, touched by some divine creative spark, baked you a Falcon Millenium cake and Darth Vader cup cakes and also painted some magic wands complete with jewels and glitter. (His original idea was to make light sabers but he thought better of it.)
Sophia helped you make your giant birthday card which started out with just Spiderman letters but ended up covered with glitter and stars and doodles.
After the park, friends and cousins hung out at the house and you played on and on and on (until Uncle Erwin finally came by at 11 from Daly city to pick up your cousins.)
Birthday #4
At school, you refused the birthday song but agreed to being hoisted up in the air 5 times. We served strawberry popsicles.
Birthday #5
On your real real birthday, August 29, Lolo visited and we went out to get some yogurt.
For dinner, you requested chicken tacos, not spicy, from the taco truck and a chocolate doughnut for dessert.
You got your birthday present from your Papa: a Boba Fett alarm clock (which you loved, loved, loved, but has since disappeared, nobody knows where)
And now that August is over, I think we can safely say that’s that. Happy 5th Birthday, Charlie Thor!
Ginikanan 
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