The first gift Edison opened was from Peter. Peter came up with the idea of getting Edison a flashlight with flames on it. When he told Melanie this, Melanie wasn’t sure we’d be able to find such a thing. But, lo and behold, Amazon had one. And so, Peter was able to give Eddie exactly what he’d hoped to. Here’s a picture of Edison looking extremely excited about it:
Next up, Eddie opened one of only two gifts he had specifically requested. T-Don the Pteranodon is one of the latest VTech Switch & Go Dinos, which have become quite popular in our home. Creegan is particularly enamored of T-Don. If he gets his hands on it, he will fight to the death to keep it. Poor Eddie has hardly gotten a chance to play with the thing.
“Possession is 9/10ths of the law!” Creegan quips.
The next couple of gifts were suggested by a good friend in Utah. First up is a book from National Geographic Kids titled Ultimate Weird But True: 1,000 Wild & Wacky Facts & Photos! Edison has spent some good time in this book, and he’s even starting to make up his own wacky facts. For instance, did you know that no matter what kind of cereal you buy, there are 25 billion pieces of cereal in each box? Or that a mere four gallons of milk contains 250 billion pounds of milk? Astonishing!
We also bought Edison a puzzle game thing called Perplexus. It’s a ball with various tracks inside through which you must skillfully guide a small steel ball. You do this by tipping and turning the ball as the situation demands. It’s pretty fun, and this has quickly become Peter’s favorite new toy in the house. He spends tons of time with it, so much so that I only have photos of Peter playing with it and not Eddie.
“Sonofabitch.”
The final gift Eddie received from Melanie and me is an mp3 player. Yup, he’s old enough for it. Thankfully, you can get them pretty cheaply nowadays. Melanie had this idea for a gift after Edison started periodically taking Melanie’s mp3 player and listening to it. Melanie has only loaded her mp3 player with podcasts, so Edison listens to the sample music that was included on her player. When Edison first opened his mp3 player and listened to it, he said, “Hey, this has the same songs as your mp3 player!” He didn’t know you could put new music on there. He’s excited about that.
Eddie was able to open one more gift, which Melanie’s parents had sent him. It’s a foam Minecraft sword. Minecraft, if you’re unaware, is a very popular computer game. Eddie had asked for a Minecraft sword, and if Melanie’s parents hadn’t supplied him with one, we would’ve done so. This worked out well for us and for Eddie.
How is it that Edison looks more excited now than when he first opened the gift? He’s good at looking excited for pictures. Sadly, any photo in which he appears ecstatic is likely to be posed.
Edison was a super sweetie when it came to opening his gifts. He told Peter and Creegan that each of them could help him open two gifts. He also let them jointly help him open a gift, so that all three were involved (as shown in the first Minecraft sword photo above). He’s a considerate kid.
Melanie decorated the house to make it fun, of course. Here are some pics of that:
The label on the chair next to Edison reads: “7 Kisses for Our Sweet 7 Year Old.” Seven Hershey Kisses had been affixed to the chair, but had long been eaten by the time we snapped this photo.
We worried that Village Inn would be crowded at 9am on a Saturday. Not only is it a weekend, but kids eat free at VI on Saturdays. As it turned out, VI wasn’t the least bit busy and we were seated right away. That gave me plenty of time to stew over what to order. (To save you the suspense, I customized an omelet with bacon, spinach, and tomatoes.) The kids opted for Vill-Inn Funny Face pancakes (of course), and Melanie ordered Fruit n’ Grain pancakes. Unlike on Peter’s birthday, there were no mental breakdowns or moments of severe stress and anxiety. It was a pleasant morning.
Cute photo. Don’t look too hard. Unfortunate timing with Edison’s finger.
After Village Inn, we took to Zoinks, which has become a very standard birthday destination for our kids. If you need a reminder, it’s the place with all the bounce houses. We didn’t take any photos this time around, but if you look back at my post about Peter’s birthday, you’ll get the idea.
We went home after Zoinks. Edison said he wanted to play Kindle for three hours. We let him. At that point, it was 4pm. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and Edison wanted to go to Jason’s Deli “for lunch.” He then wanted us to plan on having chicken patties for dinner. We told him we’d have to do chicken patties the next day if we went to Jason’s Deli, because it was getting too late in the day to plan on eating two more meals. He was cool with that. And so, we went to Jason’s Deli. (Zoinks and Jason’s Deli were a part of Peter’s birthday celebrations last year, by the way.) Somehow, Jason’s Deli was less expensive than Village Inn, despite the fact that two of our kids got a free breakfast at VI.
On our way home from Jason’s Deli, we stopped at Publix (a grocery store) and let Eddie pick out a birthday cake. (We’re saving the homemade—well, homemade from a box—cake for Eddie’s birthday party with friends, which is scheduled for this Tuesday evening.) Edison wanted a chocolate cake, and he wanted something that had a lot of his favorite color (red) on it. Here is the cake Eddie chose:
In case you missed it, the cake is decorated with an oven mitt that reads “BBQ Master” and two kebabs lined with steak, shrimp, and other grilled delights. Melanie and I can do nothing but laugh about this. Eddie was not the least bit interested in any other cakes. This is what he wanted. I must say, I doubt any other 7-year-old has had a similar birthday cake.
Before eating cake, we went swimming. It was really fun. We had the pool to ourselves, and Edison and Peter were pretending we were shrunken and were floating around inside of a toilet from which we were trying to escape.
The flash was off when this picture was snapped. We quickly corrected for this, but this photo is still cuter than the ones that followed.
And that’s Edison’s birthday. As noted above, he does have a couple of friends coming over tomorrow night. It will be a modest little party, but we didn’t want to deny him a chance to have friends over. It should be fun.
Looks like he had an awesome birthday!
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