Another Year Older

Even thought it's still three days away, we celebrated my oldest son's 12th birthday today. TWELVE?!?! How did THAT happen???? I find it truly amazing that I have a son who is 12 years old AND he's almost taller than I am at this point! YIKES!

About a month or so ago, B sat down & worked on making invitations to his party. We don't typically do full blown birthday parties around here. It's usually just family & it's usually held at Grammy & Grandpa's house next door. However, this year, Ben was determined to mail invitations to everyone he knew. Um, well, I put a stop to that - otherwise we would have had 40+ people here! :-)

The birthday child always gets to pick out a cake. Generally my MIL makes them as she is SO much better at that than I am. However, we were also having a birthday pie for my hubby who had his birthday on the 19th. I don't like making pies. They intimidate me. My MIL offered to make the pie & I ended up doing the cake this year. B wanted a Lego cake. Um, okay. It shouldn't be that hard right? I, of course, went right to Google & looked up "Lego cake." I finally found a page at Betty Crocker that showed how to put together a "building block cake" & this is the one I used - basically just for the how to & cutting guide. I always use Betty Crocker's Starlight cake recipe for cakes. I was afraid one cake wouldn't be enough (there were still quite a folks coming) so I also made Betty Crocker's Black Midnight cake (yum!!!). In the photo below, all the squares are the yellow cake and the round one is the chocolate cake. I also made a dozen cupcakes. We had more than enough cake.

I used marshmallows cut in half for the Lego studs. Frosting them was a bit of a pain - which is why I put the round cake on there with the last square on top. I did NOT want to frost more studs. I had even thought about doing one stud on top of each cupcake - nope - they got plain frosting. ::grin::

The birthday boy with his friend, J, blowing out the candles. He loved the cake.

B is opening a Nintendo DS game here. He doesn't actually HAVE the unit - yet - but he was getting one so some folks did buy him games. He was THRILLED about this.

For the last year B has been saving all of his money. Every week I go and clean my hubby's grandmother's house. B started going with me. He saves me 30 minutes when he comes & does all the dusting (two rooms) and vacuuming (two rooms). I pay him $5 for this. He also helped in the nursery at the homeschool conference I did this past year & paid him for that too. Anytime he earned money for any reason, he saved it. We were very proud of him. His goal was to buy his own Nintendo DS machine.

Of course he still loves his Legos - even if that face doesn't really show it. ::grin:: His "uncle" Tom bought this for him. It's a big set & he loved it.


My friend Tammy came up to the party with her hubby & two kiddos. She knew about B buying his own Nintendo DS unit but that he would NOT have it for the party. Since they bought him a game, she knew he would probably be dying to try it out. They each have a DS unit so she thoughtful brought ALL of them with her! All the boys were lined up on the couch playing. B & J were linked & playing a Transformers game. N & K (Tammy's daughter) were linked & playing Mario Brothers Olympics (which was really fun!). My poor J was just watching & really wanted to try it himself.
He finally got a turn but since he couldn't read, he had a bit of trouble. But look at that concentration!
I took B to the bank & then Wal-Mart this morning he picked out his own unit. We thought we'd have to kick in some money to help him buy it as we didn't think he had 100% of what he needed. Not only did he have 100% but he had plenty to get an accessory kit as well! He still has enough money left over from gifts and what we were going to pay towards it to get another game if he wants.

B & Daddy are out at the movies right now watching Star Wars: Clone Wars. B has been dying to see this. He's been telling us about it for at least the last month! He spent the afternoon playing on his new DS unit & now he's at the movies with Daddy - something he loves to do.

Another year older - my has the time flown!