And what a guy he is! Our current tradition (ahem) is to let the birthday kid choose for the day. When we asked Daniel what he wanted to do for his birthday, he asked if he could go to Taekwondo. Well, his birthday happened to fall on a Saturday, so wish granted!
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| Present contains: one notebook, a pack of Pokemon cards, and Beyblades |
He was so busy. First, he got up early. He is and always has been an early bird. His sense of competition is so high that he needs to be first to get up in the morning. If he isn't, he feels bad for the rest of the day. He helped his dad make blueberry oatmeal for breakfast and started getting excited for presents! Teen aged brothers aren't easy to wake up so early on a Saturday morning and Daniel started to feel the weight of not having total control. He ended up running to his room crying three times because of various offenses (one was me telling him that all I got for him was socks and underwear when I knew he already knew what he was getting because he found them in the van). I finally had to go wake the older boys up so he could open presents in front of them.
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| Genevieve and Fiona sewed a chicken on a nest for him |
One thing I love about my kids is that they always give each other thoughtful gifts that they create themselves or hand down out of their own toy stash. Ian and Shane both handed down some Pokemon cards. Genevieve gave him one of her ducklings that is still being brooded, plus she came up with a plan to sew the chicken. She stayed up late for several nights after Daniel had gone to bed, sewing in secret, and allowed Fiona to make the eggs to go with it.
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| Taekwondo Belt Cake |
My gift to Daniel (besides the toys) was a custom cake. I had to buy a new Kitchen Aid mixer, because my old one just can't handle a family our size. The poor thing has been sitting on my counter unused for so long because it just can't make cakes and cookies in the quantities we need. I also learned how to make fondant. I figured with all these birthdays in the family, I better find a way to avoid having Costco cake ten times a year.
Then it was time to GO. He had a baseball game, went to taekwondo, went swimming, and went to Costco and the grocery store. He came home and zoned on video games while Mark cooked up some burgers on the grill. He ate his burger and played with his new Pokemon cards. And finally (finally) we had his cake. He was so so so tired by cake time.
He persevered long enough to not only eat his cake and his ice cream, but he was able to stay up even later to play Lego Star Wars!
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| Deep breath! |
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| BLOW! |
