He's Prime!

Nathan’s birthday celebration is always spread over a few days, but this year he got to celebrate for nearly a week. Last Friday was his friend party, Sunday was his celebration with my extended family, yesterday we celebrated with our little family at home, and tonight was pack meeting where he earned his Arrow of Light. That’s a lot of celebrating! Now for a few details:

Our crazy schedule meant a purchased cake for Sunday. Nathan chose carrot cake and a fancy soccer ball design. When we picked the cake up on Saturday, he was pretty pleased with how cool it looked.

(I love Nathan’s little candle helper. She is our little copy kitten.)

With Pack Meeting scheduled on his real birthday, we had our small family celebration the evening before. I was pretty sure he was going to want some time with his birthday present and if we waited for his real birthday, he would have time to open it, get excited for a sec, and then have to leave right away for pack meeting. So we opted to do the present portion of the event the evening before. Daniel, Matthew and Malia got him Spiderman toys. Kev and I encouraged the budding musician in him and got him his own set of The Scribner Radio Music Library. For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, this is a set of nine books of sheet music published in the 1930’s and 40’s. It is composed of music that was popular on the radio at the time and is a really good cross section of classical music through the ages with some fun “contemporary” things mixed in. My dad has most of a set of these (he has the piano volumes and one of his sisters has the vocal ones) and when I was growing up my sisters that play piano played out of them a lot. They are out of print of course, so we had to buy them used but got a rockin’ deal. We paid $30 for the entire set with only $17 shipping to get them here from New York. And when I paid for them I was pleased to discover that 100% of the purchase price would be going to charity. I felt like I had made the best purchase ever! And Nathan was super duper excited. He has been sitting just like this for the past two days:

I’m thrilled that he likes his gift so much and it is something that he will be able to use his entire life.

As of this morning Nathan is officially 11. To celebrate I took Nathan, Matthew and Malia bowling. We arrived just after the bowling alley opened at 10 a.m. and were the only ones in the place until we were nearly done with our second game. Being able to visit attractions when few other people are is one of the perks to year round school. The kids all had a great time and because we have signed up for the kids bowl free program, we only had to pay the shoe rental fee (a total of $6). You really can’t be that for a fun and economical birthday activity!

Tonight Nathan received his Arrow of Light. He thought it was pretty cool that he received it on his actual birthday. And he’s already totally jazzed about being in 11 year old scouts. Having enthusiastic leaders who have already been to visit him and give him the rundown of all the cool stuff he will get to do definitely contributed to that. :-)

So I guess this year Nathan didn’t have a birthday as much as he had a birthweek…