Birthday Boy

This little boy turned 8 on Saturday. We started his special day with birthday pancakes, shaped as 8's. It was something I started doing when he was a baby, and the kids LOVE it. They both know they get pancakes on their birthday (even if it falls on a weekday) Yesterday Mason told me that once he turns 10, I no longer have to do number pancakes. He figures it'll just get too tricky then I guess.

His one birthday request was an 'itouch'. We said fat chance to that, but decided to get him an ipod shuffle (with quite a number of stipulations I might add). This kid LOVES music. He didn't really have much choice, seeing as he lives with his Dad and I, a couple of music lovers. [Let's just hope he doesn't get stuck in the 70's and 80's like his Dad] He is thrilled, but now we have to figure out how to load songs onto it. [gulp] You can load 500 songs onto this thing, and it's the size of a house key. My ipod is ancient in comparison, it's only 3 years old and it only holds 185 songs. Then it was onto the 'photo shoot'. These kids are so patient with me and my camera. Because it was his birthday, he got to choose where he wanted to go for supper. He picked Vietnamese... Oh, yummy, yum- yum, it was delicious.

Then, yesterday I read about this on Ali Edwards blog. Full Moon Walks. I thought it sounded really neat, something that we could do together as family. A family date night once a month. I told the kids about it, and they said it sounded neat. When I tried to get them ready to go last night, they were deep in play [Pokemon, of course] When I said it was time to go Mason said,
"That doesn't sound very fun... On second thought I think I'll just stay home." I was disappointed, but one thing about having children, it`s made me realize that I just can't fight with them about everything. Trying to reason with them, that the reason I want to do this is to try and create memories for the family, yadda, yadda, yadda, does nothing but make their eyes get glazed over. So I said, "That's fine, time for bed then"and suddenly the moon walk seemed like an AWESOME idea. So last night at 9:50 we trudged out to the car (kids in the jammies) and drove to Nose Hill to watch the moon rise. We did not actually do a walk, because the mosquito's were so bad. Hopefully that won`t be the case in July. We sketched the moon, we jotted down some notes, we had granola bars... Everyone participated, even Barry (thanks Hun) and we have our first month of memories recorded. Both kids expressed how much fun they had, it was cool.

And today, Barry was gone all day, helping put together a couple of the community playgrounds. He started at 9 in the morning, and did not get home tonight until after 7 pm. We took him a sandwich, drinks and snacks around noon, and then went and watched again as the concrete was poured. Our kids are going to benefit from this park, half a block away from our house, for many years to come. We appreciate all the people who volunteered their time today. It makes out community a better place to be for sure!