I'm the Mother of a 9-year-old!!!

The friday before Ben's birthday he got to have his friend, Malcolm, spend the night. This was only our second sleepover and I was worried that I wouldn't be the right kind of mother for a sleepover (that I'd be mean and cranky) or just not make it fun enough. I had purchased some frozen pizzas using a bunch of coupons (yay! for good deals), so that's what we had for dinner. At the last minute I remembered I had volunteered to take dinner to a friend who had just come home from surgery. I was glad that I had some taco soup in the freezer! I just let the boys do what they wanted and that seemed to work out just fine for them. I did make them go to bed eventually, though!

I ended up staying up late that night, too, so that I could get a batch of cinnamon rolls made. The mother of my high school friend, Tamra, had passed away and her whole family was in town for the funeral. I wanted to do something to show my love and concern for them. I took the rolls out to their home early on Saturday for their breakfast. Here at home the cinnamon rolls were a hit, too.

Kannon and I got to go out on a date that night. The High School had a free showing of their theatre 4 production of "The Princess Bride". It was SO good! We really enjoyed watching the kids perform and were glad it was full of all the good lines! The old "booing" lady ended up sitting right next to Kannon. He wanted to boo along with her. It was a good evening out.

We had Grammy and Papa come over for dinner on Sunday. We opened the presents first. Joshua, like all my kids when they are little, wanted the birthday and presents to be for him. It was all he could do to keep himself from opening Ben's presents.

He got his cub scout Bear book and neckerchief slide from Grammy and Papa.

Grandma Polish sent down these three gift: a Nerf gun, remote control truck, and Cars Vtech learning map.

We gave him 2 Nintendo ds games, a large Halo Mega Blocks set, a pocketknife (that he got to pick out with Dad), and a Triominos game.

The cake took me a whole day to put together. He had picked out 3 different cakes that he wanted me to work with to create just one cake. It was fun to do. I had to freeze the cake in between layers, so that's what took my time. It was a S'moresey Ice Cream Cake. Yum!

He left one candle burning, must've been for his girlfriend! Can't believe he's 9 already and I'm sure I'll be saying the same when he's 19!

We went to Sonic for half-price slushies on Tax day.

I went to the church on Tuesday night to learn more about being prepared. I feel like we do a pretty good job of being prepared, but every opportunity usually presents information I didn't already have. Like having shoes in our 72-hour packs, or a list of items to grab in the case of an evacuation. A sweet young woman was willing to watch the kids for me. This is where Joshua settled in. It just amazes me to watch him climb or jump the way he does. There's no fear. He climbed on the board in the left-side corner of this picture, in order to get on top of this cabinet to do puzzles.

I love Ben's school. They always make the things they are learning about FUN. They did a unit on Explorers. Each child had an explorer assigned to them, to research and write a short speech about. Ben was Sebastian Cabot. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade classes presented the explorers in a Wax Museum exhibit. It was great! I loved how each child had their own costume and some of them had their lines memorized. You had to press the "button" on their shoulder to make them start working. It was just fun to see them all work out what they had been studying.

Ben refused to wear the brown "tights" (knee-hi's) that I had for him. And he made me cut off the mustache because he "couldn't breathe!"

Sebastian Cabot was almost pirate-like. And his picture on Wikipedia is scary. He's got a permanent scowl on. It was interesting to learn about him with Ben.

We mostly give Joshua showers these days. This is one of the reasons why.

That's his favorite blankie. He won't sleep without it. I barely got it washed and dried before bed on this night. It definitely needed a wash -the water was really brown after I had wrung it out.