1. The morning began by taking their pictures at their exact time of birth (adjusted to take into account the different time zone, of course-- gotta be accurate!
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| 8:23 AM |
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| 8:28 AM |
2. Then it was time for birthday breakfast. HEB didn't have their favorite-- Pocketini-- this year, so we made do with two pretty close cereals. The HEB brand is actually pretty darn close. And, the entire box got eaten before dinner tonight. :-)
3. For their first present, I gave them the day off of school AND chores. They lounged around in their PJ's all morning reading and playing on the computer, playing outside, and re-listening to "The Amulet of Samarkand." I made Brigham's cake and then swept and mopped the downstairs, which took forever, but it's now CLEAN! There were some other nice things that happened during the day-- birthday cards and gift cards in the mail from grandma and birthday singing messages from the other grandma. These boys are well-loved.
4. In the afternoon, Mosey and I went to Walmart for him to choose some presents for his brother. And one for himself (a silver pocket watch, similar to the one Brigham bought for himself a few weeks ago). It was sweet to see him deciding on presents.
5. Brigham did have violin lessons, but after he got home, he and Joseph decided on dinner-- Papa John's delivery pizza, and I frosted his cake. Then when Ben came home, it was time to really celebrate!
6. Joseph was chomping on the bit to open presents, but we made him wait a tortuously long time. I videoed an eleven-year-old interview with both of them, which was fun. Except that poor Mosey was feeling seriously left out and did his best to make his presence known on camera. :-) Then it was dinner time. THEN we had to do cake and candles and singing. Mosey accompanied us on his cello when we sang "Happy Birthday to You." And THEN we had some snafus with the whole blowing-out-candles thing. How many times have my boys done this now? At least 10? Anyway, first of all, Brigham blew out his candles at the beginning of "Happy Birthday!"
So we did a take-2 and re-lit the candles. This time, we sang all the way to the end of the song, and Joseph dutifully blew out his candles, while Brigham kept sitting their smiling nicely.
So much for my both-boys-blowing-out-candles photo op! :-)
But, here's a darling one of the two of them looking angelic with their cakes:
By the way, Joseph chose his now-traditional raspberry white chocolate cheesecake, while Brigham chose "Too Much Chocolate Chocolate Cake." It does have lots of chocolate. And it is very good. :-)
FINALLY, it was time for presents.
Mosey got Brigham a snorkel, and Joseph the first of the "Survivors" series by Erin Hunt (her "Warriors" series is a great favorite of my boys). Ben and I gave them each bike helmets and a bike lock, and a promise to pay for 1/2 of a bike of their choice. Joseph has been saving for and wanting a bike for a long time, but nice bikes that don't fall apart are expensive. I don't know that Brigham really wants a bike as much, so I told him if he decided not to get one, he could use the money for something else. Joseph was very excited. This will come pretty close to cleaning him out, but I think he will really appreciate the bike and take good care of it. We also gave them each a funny card that plays music when opened. Mosey may have liked those even more than the twins did. :-)
7. After cheesecake and chocolate cake, and an episode of 24, it was time for bed. Day one of eleven years old is done!
8. On my sister's photo blog, she posted a couple of pictures of me at eleven years old, so I thought I'd re-post some here.
Gotta love the obligatory first-day-of-school shot. Foam curlers still in my hair. The only day of the year I'd ever actually curl my hair for school! I remember that particular outfit very fondly. My grandma Hansen took me clothes shopping and helped me pick it out. And that year, it was all about the shoulder bag. No backpacks! I think I stuck with it all year, too, and then saw reason the next year and went back to backpacks. And look at Rachel's eye! That must have been right after she fell (while spinning in circles) into a side table of ours that had been carved to look like a thorny vine. She fell face first right onto one of those thorns, and came so close to losing her eye. Ouch! She still has a scar. Ahh, memory lane.
Anyway, this is me at eleven. Hard to believe my boys are this SAME AGE!!!
2 comments:
You were a darling 11-year old and now a wonderful mom to 11 year olds. Looks to me like the boys had a pretty fun day!
Oh man, those cakes look delicious...
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