The Little Raja has a Birthday

Yesterday we celebrated Ethan's birthday (which is actually on the 9th) by having the Fritzes over for home made pizza and chocolate cake.

Since Mom and Dad were busy yesterday shopping and working on things for a small sort of business (where Mom will make meals to deliver out of our home three days per week) Mattie and I did a lot of birthday prep. Mattie is the one-woman decorating committee. I ended up being the cook, although Mom and Mattie graciously took over the pixxa near supper time. Due to some goofy mistakes, I had to remake both the cake and the pizza dough...and wasted at least a bag of flour! It was horrible! The first cake came out looking like mountains on Mars, only a little burnt around the edges, and the pizza dough, due to a slip of the pen as I was writing down the recipe, ended up looking like...well, boogers, honestly. In the end it all got straightened out. The pizza dough turned out great the second time...thanks, Mrs. Connie, for the recipe!!

I think Ethan enjoyed his party. Mrs. Michelle had made him a REALLY COOL cloak (not a cape!!!) with sleeves (very impressive) and what with dollar store swords and a yellow plastic tool belt, he was really "fixed up." Every time he opened a gift, he fact of factly announced. "Huh, just what I wanted."

I still hold the theory that if every kid were brought up getting just one birthday gift per birthday, they would be perfectly content. Every time Ethan opened a gift, he wanted to stop right there and play with it, forgetting the other unopened boxes. (Between Grammie, the Fritzes, and the rest of us, he had a lot more to open than I would have thought.) In fact, he finally delegated the opening job to his newly appointed agent, Sarah.

This morning, Mom and Dad were relegated to some form of forced labor to put together the new lego set. (Connor is working, and Mattie and I...well, somehow we got out of it.) Dad's making a lot of progress. I sat for a while eating breakfast in the vicinity for moral support, but the closest involvement I had with the legos was trying to read the warnings in 15+ languages on the plastic packages. I like just trying to figure out what the languages are...even if I can't understand any of the words, or even pronounce them. There were warnings in what I guessed to be Spanish, English, Portugese, Italian, Dutch, German, several Scandinavian tongues (surely Danish), Hungarian, Turkish, Greek, three languages with the Cyrillic aphabet, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. And there were one of two that looked like African languages...but I have no clue about that. I get a big kick out of the ones with all the little accent marks and dots and dips and doodles...God was so creative to make words!

Well, I don't have much else to say about Ethan's birthday, other than that it was exhausting, but fun. I never did understand why parents put themselves out for their kid's birthdays, but now, with Ethan, even though he's my brother, I kind of see...they aren't little forever. It doesn't have to be expensive to be special, either. A little love goes a long way :)


P.S. Christmas devotions can be very thought provoking-- especially when you have a five year old brother! Yesterday morning, while Mom was sharing the story of Jacob's ladder with us, and she asked Ethan what the names of Jacob and Rachel's two sons were. His reply? "Joseph and Frodo." !!!