The January Three--Part 2

Ok....so much time has already passed, it seems like Crispy's birthday was eons ago. Even so, I can't skip out on my quiet, unobtrusive, middle child #5. (though I can guarantee he would never complain if I had, because that is just the sweet kind of boy that he is!)
Christopher. Dear, sweet, Crispy.

Quiet and gentle from the day he was born.

Calm and collected(well, at least collected).

Always so willing to help.

A perfect companion for everyone in this house.

Constantly gives up his time/things for everyone else.

And on his birthday, HE gets to finally be the star of the show. In fact, this year, he had not one, but THREE parties!

Christopher is such an easy kid that it is actually quite hard to make him feel special....he is simply fine with....well....whatever! Poor kid can't even come up with any ideas about what he'd like because he is just so "go with the flow" and "be content with what you have/get". All FABULOUS qualities, mind you. But for crying out loud.....this kid is just way too nice!!

#1: The combined massive January Birthdays Party. There are now 5 of us in our combined family that celebrate birthdays in January. This year we picked January 10 to be the special date.

It allowed people to come see Jonny perform at Church in the morning with his performing arts ministry group. They did a skit scene from their upcoming play, complete with singing and dancing. These kids have been working long and hard on this every Sunday morning from 8-9:30 am since September. I do not have a picture....it WAS during a church service, after all! I can tell you without question, that it was great!

This day also allowed people to come see Michael play a hockey game in our Waconia arena in the afternoon. A great game, like usual....and Michael played well. I have been teasing him so much about being in the penalty box, that to prove me wrong, he did play a little "nicer" today. Is it wrong that we cheer for our kids to "get" the other guys when they are out there on the ice? Or that we clap when someone else's kid from the other team crumples into a pile after being hit hard by one of our team members? What in the world kind of parents have we become, anyhow????

And finally, this was the last day of our light show for 2009. One last look for everyone before they headed home after the game. For our family, we piled all the kids into the truck, dressed in their pajamas and boots, and spent one last viewing as a family huddled together in the cul-de-sac. It is always sad to finally turn the light show off. All the work that goes into it. All the planning. All the upkeep and corrections. All the traffic. All the joy it brings to others. All the excitement it brings to the kids in the city. With a simple push of a button, it is over. *sigh* And the planning for next year has already begun!

#2: I took him out on his birthday. Christopher was lucky enough to have his birthday off of school this year (was Martin Luther King, Jr Day). To celebrate, we spent the day with Grandma C at the Minnesota Zoo. We spent our day wandering around the inside exhibits which we usually never have time for in the warm weather months. We even walked through a part of the zoo I had NEVER seen before...the Minnesota Trail. Filled with wild animals habitating in our own state, this was a lovely walk-through exhibit. We watched the wolves up close as they played together, feasted our eyes on a glorious bald eagle, and admired the grace and elegance of the massive wildcats of all kinds.

We finished our day with a super special treat----dinner at Chuck E Cheese! Good gravy, that place is crazy, even when it is not necessarilly crazy. The kids had no problem spending more than three hours eating pizza, pretending to be pop-stars, controlling the store cameras, and playing video games. Bonus: everyone got to meet the one and only Chuck E as well! After pooling their winning tickets together and haggling over prizes, Grandma and I were quite ready to go. Like, really VERY ready to go. But the kids had a great time! Even Bethany was happy and well entertained throughout the evening with so many things to look at and noises to explore!

#3: I threw him a birthday party. Like literally, threw it together in 3 days time. Seriously, it is so completely crazy around here that to find even a small two hour chunk of time on a weekend is a near impossible feat. So I called all of his little friends, giving them only two days notice. Nice, eh? Luckily for Crispy, his friends all come from normal and sane families, so that all but one little friend was able to make the impromptu party.

We were planning on sledding at the giant hill. But because of the nasty freezing rain all weekend, we were subjected to the confines of our still overrun-with-Christmas-decor living room. But to my utter shock and complete amazement, each of Christopher's 9 little friends were just as sweet and kind as he (though one may have arguably had much too much energy). Who would have thought that so many 8 year old little boys would be so content for 25 minutes with one box of legos??? They were all so engrossed in their lego creations that I felt bad moving them on to games!

Crispy wanted a Pokemon party.

Being that Pokemon is a thing from the past (this was our 6th Pokemon party to date), I had to improvise on decor. I made Pokeball plates using red and white paper plates, cut and pasted back together. We made some games out of existing Pokemon figures.

We played some Bingo. Yes, even Bingo was fun to these sweet little boys!

Jonny and Crispy hand-picked Poke figure decor for the table.

I threw together a cake. Again, literally. A beautiful half dome chocolate cake flopped out of it's bowl the night before. What to do? I decided to give a cake recipe I had seen on a friend's blog a try. I whipped up a batch of mint frosting, mixed it into my bowl of cake crumbles, rolled them into 2-inch balls and jabbed a popsicle stick into each one, then chilled a few hours in the freezer. The final step was to dip into white candy coating, chill again, then dip half of the cake ball into red candy coating. Presto!

Some pretty cute Pokeball cake pops!

All and all, I think Christopher had a pretty good birthday this year.....at least, that's what he told me. But really, would he ever say otherwise??

Happy 8th Birthday, Christopher!