This Kid Had A Great Birthday

Ethan turned six this last week.  He is growing up so fast!  He is my kid that is up at six in the morning, sometimes before Brian and I get up.  He's the one that gets ready for school (almost) every morning all on his own, including saying his morning prayers, although he is starting to sneak in some play time in the mornings as well.  He loves dinosaur oatmeal; says he loves fish, but doesn't actually eat fish; likes to wash the dishes; and loves to play computer games.  The thing he's been saying the most of lately is, "Mom, I want to do something fun," or "I have nothing to do that's fun," and usually that means he wants to watch TV or play computer.  Actually, a couple of weeks ago, when he wasn't allowed on the computer, he kept saying, "I just feel like I need to exercise my hands," hoping that I would count moving the computer mouse as hand exercises.  He loves to cook, and he's a great help in the kitchen.  He's even volunteered to make his favorite dessert, lemon bars, for Family Home Evening tomorrow.

Ethan started his week off by having a combined birthday party with his cousin, Asher.  He requested a dinosaur party with a dinosaur cake, but the cake turned into a volcano cake with dinosaurs on it.  He watched me decorate it, and if I was a nicer mom, I would have let him pipe more frosting than just a line of lava and a couple of trees.  He was happy with how it turned out, though.

On his birthday he took dinosaur oatmeal to school for his birthday treat.  These he did help me out with.  He cut the cards, while I stapled them to the oatmeal.  He was very excited about these!

 We had the Activity Day girls over, and they sang him happy birthday before they had cookies.

But he didn't even stick around until the end of the song.  He wanted to go play upstairs with the Salisbury boys.

We also went to red Robin for his birthday dinner.  He ordered a corn dog, which surprised us, because he's been turning into a cheeseburger person.  Before the food came he said he was starving, then once he took a bite of his corn dog, he said he was "stuffed full," but then I told him the waiters wouldn't come sing to him until his food was gone, so he went ahead and ate the whole thing.  We got him a ten-games-in-one set that includes checkers and games like that, and the Pairs in Pairs game, by the same people who did Bananagrams.  (He likes games and puzzles.)

Ethan had his friend birthday party on Thursday after school.  We just included Marcus and invited his cousins, Derek and Asher.  We wanted to keep it small, plus I wanted to do it at a time when they wouldn't have a big sister around to take over - I mean - "help."  We picked everyone up from school, had lunch, opened presents, and built our very own volcano.  I used the moon sand recipe that's been floating around Pinterest (8 cups of flour, 1 cup of baby oil) and loved it.  It didn't stay well enough to keep the volcano shape, so we probably should have used play dough, but oh well.  It worked well enough, and I found it very therapeutic to play with.    We used the elephant toothpaste recipe for the lava, but it didn't erupt right.  When I added the "make it explode" ingredient, it just grew a tiny bit.  I tried adding more hydrogen peroxide (9% - was that the problem?) but that didn't work, so then we went to plan B and threw in a bunch of baking soda and vinegar.

Then, on Friday we had a stay-cation with Brian's parents at the local La Quinta.  We were supposed to go up to the cabin this weekend, but it didn't work out, and Dan and Diane still wanted to do something fun, so they came up with this.  We played games, had the pool all to ourselves, ordered pizza, and just visited and had fun in the hotel room.  Diane told me today that they had planned on spending the night, but at 1:30 someone having a different sort of party was put into the room next to them, so they decided to spend the rest of the night in their own bed.  It was a lot of fun!

Becca looks worried in this picture, but she really did enjoy it.

She looks a little bit happier in this one.

Brian thought he had bubbles on his face, but as you can see, he didn't.