Skip to main content

Carl's Sixth Birthday

Happy birthday to Carl!  He is six!  He woke up this morning and told me that he could feel his legs growing in the night.  That's because he's getting bigger!

Here is what we did to celebrate:

1.  Most importantly to Carl: there were presents!  He opened up the present from his Grandma first thing in the morning.  It was a great big lego set.  He hurried upstairs to put it together.  But soon enough, he figured out that some of the pieces were missing.  It looked like someone had opened the box in the store and removed the minifigures.  So (at 8 am in the morning), the whole family piled into the car and went to ShopKo to return the set and get a replacement.  Carl was very worried that they would just put it back on the shelf and some other kid would have the same disappointing experience but the shopkeeper assured him that they would send it back to the Lego cooperation to be fixed.  Happy, we hurried home so that the boys could put the set together while I made German pancakes.

2.  Which brings us to breakfast.  I made German pancakes (aka a Dutch Baby) because I think they are the best thing ever.  I don't think Carl is as impressed.

3.  I had to go visiting teaching after breakfast so Soren and Carl went to play at Maddy's house.  When I got back, we had lunch and then the kids and I went to Rockford to play at Monkey Joe's.  It's a bounce house place.  We stayed there for a good three hours.  (As a side note, Soren took The Book of Mormon that I had in my purse and shared it with a girl he met there.  Cool!)



5.  After Monkey Joe's, we got slushies at Sonic for the ride home.  Carl chose cherry flavor.

6.  At home, Carl went back to work on his lego set while I made the requested dinner: orange chicken and red-frosted cake with strawberries.  Carl had invited the missionaries to share his cake with him; they arrived around 6:30.  So did Maddy and Aunt Rachel.  Nan got there after 7, bringing our guest list to 5.

7. The cake was yummy, if messy.  I put in so much red food coloring that the frosting stained all the kids' hands and lips.  It was, apparently, just the way Carl had imagined it, though, so he was happy.

8.  Aunt Rachel brought the very best present: a Lego Airjitzu flyer.  Carl was super excited about it.  He put it together on the spot and spent the rest of the evening making it fly around the living room.  Nan gave him a children's camera and Dad gave him a very versatile tripod for it, so that he can make Lego movies.

9.  I gave Carl a new book, one of my favorites from when I was a kid.  He was politely grateful for it but, of course, it couldn't compare with the nifty flyer.  And that's ok.  I don't need to give the best presents.  We still read it together before bed, which was what I wanted out of the day.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Works for Us: Room Time

I've decided to do a new series of posts on how I make parenting work for us. Every parent does it differently--which is great!--but I have a hard time keeping my discoveries to myself. The things I do may not work for anyone else but I want to record them and remember them. Hopefully, it will also help me vent my soap-box-y-ness so that I'm not always imposing my ideas on other people. That will be what "What-Works-for-Us Posts" are about. One of the things that we have always done, but has made a HUGE difference in the move from one to two children, is Room Time . When Soren was 6 months old, I started having him play alone (in a safe place) every day for a few minutes. At first it was only five minutes in the port-a-crib but we quickly worked up to fifteen, then thirty. At that time, I used those precious minutes to do housework or relax on the couch. When I was pregnant with Carl, Soren would play alone for about an hour in his room and I would usually tak...
2 comments
Read more

Surrounded by Love

One of my greatest worries about having four children was that I would not be able to welcome and love my new baby as well as I had the others.  Now that he is here, I feel that he is perhaps the most welcomed and best loved of all my sons.  More on that in a moment. I struggled to bond with Leif in utero, in part because pregnancy was old hat to me and in part because life was busy with too many other things.  The new miracle  growing inside of me was the most normal thing about my life.  There were a few good moments that helped me prepare mentally: doing guided meditations during Christmas vacation, my blessingway on January 6th, and a really good conversation I had with Scott about my hopes and worries.  But mostly, my mind was elsewhere. And then there was the birth.  I should have known that it would be a totally unique experience and that it would prepare me for this totally unique child. Needless to say, I'm crazy about the little guy. ...
1 comment
Read more

ABCs

A couple of months ago I was trying to encourage Soren to draw. For 15 or 20 minutes every afternoon, we would sit at the coffee table with paper and pencil. I would draw stick figures and doodles; Soren would watch, his own paper untouched. After a couple of days repeating my usual pictures over and over, I ran out of ideas and started writing the letters of his name. One day I wrote and drew pictures of all the things I could think of that began with S: Soren, snake, superman, spider, stars, etc. The next day we focused on the letter O. It gave me ideas for drawing, which kept Soren entertained even if it wasn't fulfilling its original purpose. A couple more weeks went by and I didn't put any effort into reinforcing the letters. So I was very surprised when, one day while reading a naptime story, he pointed to the page and said very distinctly, "ess". He was, in fact, pointing to an S. And he was very excited about it. So, instead of reading the book, we sp...
3 comments
Read more