One Decade
That’s how long I’ve been a mom.
Or, that’s how old Seahawk is. Yeah. That makes me sound less old ;).
We had a big week of celebrations. On Sunday, we had the two older boys’ joint “friend” party. We bought white t-shirts from Gen-X and a package of fabric markers and each kid got to decorate their own shirt. Seahawk did his up like a jersey of his favorite football player, Russell Wilson of the Seattle Seahawks (hence his blog name). Munchkin did a space scene. When they were wearing their shirts the next day, I took the opportunity during our daily trek to the store to teach them the planets in order. I learned them in third grade, and to this day I still use the mnemonic device my teacher taught us: My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Pizzas (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto). Yes, I know Pluto isn’t technically considered a planet anymore, but it completes the funny phrase nicely :).
Anyway, after the shirt coloring, the kids went outside to play (yay for beautiful weather in late October!). Then I called them back in to do “build your own pizzas.” I made pizza crust, tripling my normal recipe, and divided it into mini-pizza size portions. We put various toppings into bowls and kids got to choose what they wanted. Then we baked them up and served them for dinner (the party ran from 4-6). Overall, a very successful party! Except for the fact that I didn’t take any pictures. That was a tragedy.
On Monday, we had Seahawk’s “grandparents dinner.” He chose baked ziti, which works for me, because it’s easy to make a big pan of that! In lieu of gifts, he asked everyone for a cash donation to put toward his “basketball fund.” He’s never played a team sport (they’re expensive around here!) and really wanted to. Between everyone, he got what he needed, plus a pair of shoes specifically for the gym. I can’t wait to start going to his games next month!
Then on his real birthday, yesterday, I made tamales for dinner – that’s another of his favorites, but we don’t have it very often because they’re very time consuming to make. Because we’d had cake (homemade pumpkin cake – yum!) at the grandparents dinner, I just bought him a doughnut from the grocery store for his real birthday. It’s all about portion control, and one doughnut won’t stick around for days ;). We put ten candles in it for him (which hubby thought was about the funniest thing he’d ever seen – I didn’t tell him in advance I was going to do that) and sang the traditional song. And that was that.
How do you celebrate birthdays?