Happy 3rd Birthday

My parents drove across the country for a retirement vacation and to visit grandchildren. On their return trip, we decided to celebrate F's birthday, so that he could have family there. (My dear husband would be out of town on his birthday.)F-- had requested tigers, Lightning McQueen and ghosts be on his birthday cake, with my mom's help (meaning she did it while I worked on dinner), he got tigers--three of them crawling up his birthday cake.

F-- gave blowing out his candles a noble effort. He got the first two, but couldn't get the third. He blew harder and harder, but all he succeeded in doing was spraying part of the cake with spit. I helped him get his last candle out (and scraped the spitty parts off the cake). And we ate. It was great.

For the next week or so, as we'd drive in the car, F-- would be singing in the back seat.

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday dear F--

Happy birthday to you.

And then he would blow out his imaginary candles.

On his actual birthday, we invited some friends we met at the library for the Halloween parade over to the house for cupcakes. F-- tried the candles again, same thing happened (though with less spitting).

Now my little guy is 3, though if you ask him, he will tell you he is 6.

Haunting Halloween

With Halloween on a Sunday this year, we debated the level of involvement we were going to have with trick or treating. After all, we are trying to teach our children to honor the Sabbath day; however, we are also trying to instill in them a sense of community. So we decided to participate in the ward's trunk or treat, one of the local trick or treat at businesses, and a very limited trick of treat of our neighborhood (with our neighbors).

The boys had a ball. They picked their own costumes (A-- didn't get much of a choice).

S-- as Peter Pan (The Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson variety, complete with Tink sitting in her next in his hair. Of course, since he hasn't seen what that Peter looked like, him idea of Peter Pan was influenced by Disney.)

F-- as a ghost (he loved shouting "Boo" at people).

A-- as a really cute frog (you might recognize the costume from years past)

Me in my wonderful Nigerian Bride costume that my dear husband brought back from Spain.

All of us trick or treating at the businesses. It was touch and go for a while because F-- couldn't find his shoes (thus the stroller) and S-- was scared silly of the whole thing. He wouldn't walk by the strangers, ask them for candy or say thank you.
Until . . .

Spiderman came along and showed S-- that he didn't need to be scared. From this point on, S-- was on board with the whole trick or treating.