Elliot's 6th Birthday
We had Elliot's party at Fun City this year (just like last year). We invited a very few friends, some of which have dads who are so connected that we ended up getting discounts on our pizza and a free party room! Woo! Elliot was animated the whole night, like this:
This is the first year I've ever sat down with him and made a list of everything he said he wanted (very funny, modest things like play dough, modeling clay, a candle for his room, a transformer etc.) and then went out and got everything on the list or divvied it up between friends and family. So the kid got everything he wished for. :)
Anyway, here's the free party room. Thanks Dave!!!!!!!!! That's Dave in the front, there with Deb, his wife. Then Gran in the back. My mom (Poppye) is holding Philip, and that's my husband. Incidentally, he's the only family member who did NOT get a haircut very recently.
Fun City is a fun place. Duh. The kids freakin' love Fun City. They go wild. They get tokens and win tickets and stuff. And that big circle thing in the background is the exit of a huge tube slide (of which there are several) that comes down from a huge tube climbey-thing up above the rest of the game area. Fun Indeed. Waaaaay better than Chuck E Cheese's! And the pizza is WAY better.
Okay so back in the party room, here's me with my friend Holly. Oh look, you can see part of the tube play thing in the background.
Aand, here's me with Mom, Dad, and Gran. :)
So anyway, back to ELLIOT stuff. Here's his batman cake that I made for him. Funny story - as soon as Tim set this cake in front of Elliot, T.J. (Deb's son) popped out from in front of Tim there and actually blew out the candle before Elliot could. Ha!! So daddy relit it and Elliot got to blow it out too. Candles are just way too fun for only one person to blow at them. I feel fairly certain that at this point in our children's lives, nobody has ever gotten to blow out all their candles entirely by themselves.
Have a closer look at the cake. That, my friends, is as dark a blue as you can get with white buttercream icing and a tube of blue food-coloring. That's it. So Tim was kind and said we were having the 70's batman cake. :) Thanks honey. But the BAT SYMBOL is what I really want to brag about. I made that sucker out of a bar of Hershey's chocolate. That's right. That's why I was a genius on Facebook a couple days ago. :) Melt and pipe onto a piece of wax paper that's sitting on top of a printout of the bat symbol, freeze, then peel off and set onto the cake. Oh, and the yellow oval, there, is made from the homemade marshmallow fondant I made for the first time - fun stuff! So I am very proud of this cake. It's way better than the usual cake-in-the-13-inch-pan with chocolate icing smeared on top. Oh yeah, and I piped his name out of the Hershey's chocolate, too, and froze it to set. I should have written it on the wax paper already half way into the freezer so that it hadn't spread as much as it did, but whatever.
Elliot got a lot of cool presents, but my favorite, since this is my blog, was the scroll letter straight from Albus Dumbledore, himself. It said:
Dear Elliot Nathan Lindsley,
The witches and wizards of Hogwarts School are
pleased to announce that you have been selected to
receive a very important wizarding artifact.
A parcel will be arriving at your doorstep in a few
days. Check your post often.
Most Sincerely,
Albus Dumbledore, Head Master of
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
P.S. Watch out for the owl -- it bites.
[signed "Happy 6th Birthday Elliot! -Albus"]
Tim read it for him.
Elliot didn't exactly know what it meant but I think he had suspicions.
Elliot has been wanting - and checking the mailbox regularly for - a replica Voldemort wand from the Harry Potter movies for an entire year now (Tim has Harry's wand and I have Hermione's, and Elliot has been sure the Voldemort wand was coming for him any day now since last October!) And so I finally ordered him one off ebay (which that guy is going to get a terrible rating from me because the light on the wand does NOT work, but Elliot doesn't care) and it arrived in the mailbox yesterday.
Which he got promptly confiscated, sadly, because he ran his mouth in class too much all day long and his teacher had to walk him out to my van to tell me to my face how talkative and out of control Elliot's mouth was all day. :(
Anyway, back to the party.
The babies, Philip and Max, 4.5 weeks apart in age. :) Max looks much bigger in this photo, and he is in real life, but in this photo mainly just because somehow he's more in the foreground than Philip. I think this is Philip's first time to watch Max, as in, see another baby.
Pawpaw got to hold Philip for a while. He had the magic touch. Well, that and the pacifier also had the magic touch. :)
Look at those hands.
This was an extremely successful party I'd say. I couldn't have handled it if any more kids were there, whatsoever. Get a load of the size of this chocolate bar Elliot requested (thanks to his recent viewings of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
We have a great little group of friends. :) Left to right: TJ, Lukas, Amanda, Clara, Elliot, and McKinley.
I want to tack onto the end, here, that a moment of my sixth birthday is my earliest, clearest memory. I stood on the foot of my bed and opened my top dresser drawer. I took my blue and white "6" candle (like the one on Elliot's cake) and put it into my drawer. And I stood there, looking down at my candle, thinking to myself how I was old enough now to not keep changing my lucky number with each passing birthday. So from that day on, 6 has been my lucky number. I don't think Elliot's ever had a lucky number. But I'm sure he's been very acutely self-aware before this birthday. I wonder what his earliest childhood memory like mine will be. I hope it's a happy one.
This is the first year I've ever sat down with him and made a list of everything he said he wanted (very funny, modest things like play dough, modeling clay, a candle for his room, a transformer etc.) and then went out and got everything on the list or divvied it up between friends and family. So the kid got everything he wished for. :)
Anyway, here's the free party room. Thanks Dave!!!!!!!!! That's Dave in the front, there with Deb, his wife. Then Gran in the back. My mom (Poppye) is holding Philip, and that's my husband. Incidentally, he's the only family member who did NOT get a haircut very recently.
Fun City is a fun place. Duh. The kids freakin' love Fun City. They go wild. They get tokens and win tickets and stuff. And that big circle thing in the background is the exit of a huge tube slide (of which there are several) that comes down from a huge tube climbey-thing up above the rest of the game area. Fun Indeed. Waaaaay better than Chuck E Cheese's! And the pizza is WAY better.
Okay so back in the party room, here's me with my friend Holly. Oh look, you can see part of the tube play thing in the background.
Aand, here's me with Mom, Dad, and Gran. :)
So anyway, back to ELLIOT stuff. Here's his batman cake that I made for him. Funny story - as soon as Tim set this cake in front of Elliot, T.J. (Deb's son) popped out from in front of Tim there and actually blew out the candle before Elliot could. Ha!! So daddy relit it and Elliot got to blow it out too. Candles are just way too fun for only one person to blow at them. I feel fairly certain that at this point in our children's lives, nobody has ever gotten to blow out all their candles entirely by themselves.
Have a closer look at the cake. That, my friends, is as dark a blue as you can get with white buttercream icing and a tube of blue food-coloring. That's it. So Tim was kind and said we were having the 70's batman cake. :) Thanks honey. But the BAT SYMBOL is what I really want to brag about. I made that sucker out of a bar of Hershey's chocolate. That's right. That's why I was a genius on Facebook a couple days ago. :) Melt and pipe onto a piece of wax paper that's sitting on top of a printout of the bat symbol, freeze, then peel off and set onto the cake. Oh, and the yellow oval, there, is made from the homemade marshmallow fondant I made for the first time - fun stuff! So I am very proud of this cake. It's way better than the usual cake-in-the-13-inch-pan with chocolate icing smeared on top. Oh yeah, and I piped his name out of the Hershey's chocolate, too, and froze it to set. I should have written it on the wax paper already half way into the freezer so that it hadn't spread as much as it did, but whatever.
Elliot got a lot of cool presents, but my favorite, since this is my blog, was the scroll letter straight from Albus Dumbledore, himself. It said:
Dear Elliot Nathan Lindsley,
The witches and wizards of Hogwarts School are
pleased to announce that you have been selected to
receive a very important wizarding artifact.
A parcel will be arriving at your doorstep in a few
days. Check your post often.
Most Sincerely,
Albus Dumbledore, Head Master of
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
P.S. Watch out for the owl -- it bites.
[signed "Happy 6th Birthday Elliot! -Albus"]
Tim read it for him.
Elliot didn't exactly know what it meant but I think he had suspicions.
Elliot has been wanting - and checking the mailbox regularly for - a replica Voldemort wand from the Harry Potter movies for an entire year now (Tim has Harry's wand and I have Hermione's, and Elliot has been sure the Voldemort wand was coming for him any day now since last October!) And so I finally ordered him one off ebay (which that guy is going to get a terrible rating from me because the light on the wand does NOT work, but Elliot doesn't care) and it arrived in the mailbox yesterday.
Which he got promptly confiscated, sadly, because he ran his mouth in class too much all day long and his teacher had to walk him out to my van to tell me to my face how talkative and out of control Elliot's mouth was all day. :(
Anyway, back to the party.
The babies, Philip and Max, 4.5 weeks apart in age. :) Max looks much bigger in this photo, and he is in real life, but in this photo mainly just because somehow he's more in the foreground than Philip. I think this is Philip's first time to watch Max, as in, see another baby.
Pawpaw got to hold Philip for a while. He had the magic touch. Well, that and the pacifier also had the magic touch. :)
Look at those hands.
This was an extremely successful party I'd say. I couldn't have handled it if any more kids were there, whatsoever. Get a load of the size of this chocolate bar Elliot requested (thanks to his recent viewings of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
We have a great little group of friends. :) Left to right: TJ, Lukas, Amanda, Clara, Elliot, and McKinley.
I want to tack onto the end, here, that a moment of my sixth birthday is my earliest, clearest memory. I stood on the foot of my bed and opened my top dresser drawer. I took my blue and white "6" candle (like the one on Elliot's cake) and put it into my drawer. And I stood there, looking down at my candle, thinking to myself how I was old enough now to not keep changing my lucky number with each passing birthday. So from that day on, 6 has been my lucky number. I don't think Elliot's ever had a lucky number. But I'm sure he's been very acutely self-aware before this birthday. I wonder what his earliest childhood memory like mine will be. I hope it's a happy one.