Eight Years of Being Grandma

Saturday was big day at McVal's house.  It was Leon's birthday.  Did you know that he shares a birthday with our first president, George Washington?  Little tidbits of fact that you pick up driving with an 8year old and have to google later to find out if it's true.  It is.

I remember the next morning when we finally got to go meet him at the hospital!

Wow...  he's grown in so many ways since then.

So just to preface a little bit, on Friday night, Meri came over and we made the pinata.  Walmart didn't have a Pokemon pinata and the cheapest pinata at all that they had looked like a decorated box.  Ummm  I can do that...  So I drew out a Pikachu, outlined with magic marker and cut it out.  Then after only 30 minutes of getting glue stuck on our hands, we got it done.  What do you think?  

He loved it.

Robb got up super early Saturday, like he does every day of the week and had two cakes baked and stuck in the freezer for me by the time I got up.  Then he helped me shred and dice almost 10 pounds of potatoes that I'd baked the day before.  That's my weekend cooking prep that I've promised to myself that we'll try to do something each weekend.  

Then I cleaned up the house, wrapped presents and got the cake ready while Robb went to pick up the boy from his mom's.  

I met them at the local Petco and Leon and I went in to buy his hermit crabs.  We'd agreed on two since his research had shown that they're very social creatures.  Who knew a hermit would like to party?!!

He and Grandpa, mostly Grandpa, came up with names for the two crabs.  Grandma Val and Meri.

Really??...

We found out in the store that they're not allowed to sell hermit crabs unless they're sold in groups of 3 or larger.  So now we have Grandma Val, Meri and Maddy as the names.  But Leon had different names picked out.  Pokey, Pinchy and Snappy.  Those sound better...

By his birthday party that evening, he'd already renamed them.  And of course the only name I remember now is Swirly...  Not due to a possible quick dunk in the toilet, but because of the pattern on his shell.

Anyone, several dollars later, we came out to the cars with Curly, Larry and Mo and Leon was in love.  I had some shopping to do in town, so Robb took the boy home. I got home later and helped Leon and his dad get the hermit crabs into their new home.

THEN I got into party mode and got the cake completely finished.  

Here's what I did...

I wrapped a Scrabble board that has a pedestal on it with shiny wrapping paper.  Then raided some books that were going to the Goodwill, mostly smutty Harlequin Romance types in the same wrapping paper.  I did have to use one of my paperback Dean Koontz books as it was the right thickness.  Then taped them to the wrapped Scrabble board.

Then to the two cakes.  One was chocolate and the other yellow, both from box mixes.

Chocolate one - cut into 4 equal pieces. frosted two of them and stacked the other two on top. Then frosted each chunk.

Yellow cake - did the same thing, but frosted with white frosting.

After dabbing a little frosting on top of each wrapped book, I carefully transferred each big cake chunk over to the Scrabble board.

For a little pizzazz, I drizzled a bit of melted frosting of the opposite kind over the chunks.

Then stuck the whole thing in the garage fridge to keep the cat away from it.

Oh he loved it!  

Maddy and Matthew called on a DUO call and talked with Leon for a while and then we got to visit with them too!  It seems like it had been a LONG time since we'd talked last but I know it hadn't been that long.

Meri and Shub arrived shortly before the pizza was ready (Leon requested Casey's pepperoni pizza for dinner) and they wrapped up his gifts in the bathroom.  They had to pull me in to show what they'd gotten, because no one has enough patience to wait all of 15 minutes...

The order of the party was up to Leon, his dad and Jen.  So after we got done eating the pizzas, he destroyed the pinata.  I found out that not only should I make sure the little flap on the bottom of the pinata should be REALLY flexible but also to cut through the papers again once done to make sure you don't have an indestructible pinata for a frustrated kid.  He ended up pulling the paper off the side and his dad helped him dump out the guts.

THEN gifts!  He got so many nice things and has a stack of stuff on the table still of gifts that haven't sifted into his life yet.  Oh it will...

And since he's 8 now, I figured he was old enough for trick candles.  It was perfect!  And now he's got like 25 girlfriends, from just 8 candles that came coming back to light.

Ryan was impressed with the cake and thought that the wrapped bits were presents also.  Not unless you want to expose your kid to situations above his age... ;)  It's just for show.

He said that it might be good enough for Pinterest even!  I don't think he understands how Pinterest works.  I can add it myself and see if it goes viral I suppose...  Not sure if I got a good enough picture that crops out the rest of my cluttered house though.

Eh - whatever.

Anyway, life goes on and you try to diet with birthday cake in the house.  The diet will wait to restart tomorrow.  It's been a rough few weeks and Fitness Pal hasn't seen me log in for a long time.  

Have a great week!