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Carl's 7th Birthday

This year, I turned thirty.  And you know what?  I am really happy about that.  I feel like I have been doing "thirties" stuff for a long time and that I have totally earned the official promotion.  I'm thirty.  It sounds a lot more mature than twenty-nine.  

Although, I'm not sure how "mature" it is to worry about how mature you sound. 

And right on the tails of my big 3 - 0, Carl turned 7.  The jump from six to seven seems almost as huge to me as the jump between twenty and thirty.  Seven is approaching big kid territory--and Carl is totally ready for that.  He's learned so much in the past year.  He can now do chores without being reminded, read, carry his youngest brother, make meals, and drum up his own neighborhood playmates.  This year, he made the transition from being a fully dependent member of our household to being a very helpful contributor.  It's awesome.

To celebrate:

1. His Grandma, Grandpa, and Mother Johnson all came to town!  So he had both sets of grandparents to dote on him, as well as a great-grandparent.  (That used to happen a lot for me when I was a child; I think it's the joy of having an August birthday.)
2. We took him out to Monkey Joe's, of course.  It was actually on the day before his birthday that we did that.  For the first hour, my mom watched them while I took my grandma shoe shopping.  But when I got back, they were still going strong.  All except Leif, who was tired of the toddler area.  He adores Carl and wanted to follow him into the big bouncy houses.  

3. On the morning of Carl's birthday we had his favorite breakfast: pancakes with orange julius!  Since that's actually what we have every Saturday, I made it more special by putting sprinkles in the pancakes.  That was a hit.

4. Before the relatives arrived, I gave him the present from his Dad and I: a new set of headphones with monkey faces on the ears.  He likes to listen to playaways all the time but we have gone through half-a-dozen pairs of cheap headphones in the last year and, at the moment, he didn't have any.  So this nice set was well received.

5. I took him to the store to buy LEGOs with some money Father Duede sent.  The clerk said that he was the most polite and cheerful customer she'd ever had.  So that was the best part of my day.

6. Back at home, he and Soren disappeared into the basement to build.  Then, Grandma came.  She gave Carl some more LEGOs and a new scooter.  Unfortunately, two of the LEGO sets he got that day were missing pieces (really? two of them? and two years in a row?) so we headed back to the store to make an exchange.  And then the big boys disappeared again.

7. There was a primary activity later that morning.  It was a water-themed activity and the kids played games that were both wet and somehow related to My Gospel Standards.  They had a Modesty Relay Race and a Friendly Water Balloon Fight.  And played Musical Sprinkler.  It was actually pretty clever.  At the end of the activity, they had a hot dog lunch with a birthday cake for Carl.  So it was pretty much a birthday party, right?


8. When we came home from the activity, our neighbors were being evicted.  So that's something I will remember about Carl's seventh birthday.

9. In the afternoon, there was a baptism.  Four new kids were baptized into our ward!  Carl was gracious about sharing his birthday with them.  He picked out a giant box of candy for each of them and gave it to them as a "welcome to the ward" gift.

10. My mom made a birthday feast and the missionaries came for dinner.  I made gluten-free shortcake with strawberries (but it was disgusting).  Nan and Poppy came for cake.  They gave Carl is gift card for Amazon, which he spent on ... more LEGOs.  Some things haven't changed!

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