King for the Day

So, today is not Henry's 3rd birthday. It is tomorrow.

But, let's face it, it's harder to grant a King For the Day's every whim on the Sabbath. No shopping, no eating out, and while I love Sunday's, they're tiring for the kids and everyone ends up grumpy.

SO! Rather than endure unnapped babies and long church meetings and THEN try to let Henry enjoy his day, we moved his birthday to today, a PERFECT day, a SATURDAY. It's only one day, and he doesn't know any different.

Tomorrow you shall have to endure my memories of the last three years, but today it's all about the party.

I hope he had a fun day. We just did family stuff. My poor kid always has birthdays in new places. He has not had a SINGLE birthday in the same place, so once again, we live somewhere new, and once again there was no one to invite to a party.

Henry requested the following things for his celebration:
1. Balloons
2. Pizza
3. BLUE cake (seriously)
4. A present.

That's it. How easy and do-able. I'll remember this when he's 8 and asking for an IPOD and a cell phone and a play station. :)

So, task one of the morning: Balloons. Three stores later, VIOLA!

From Henry's 3rd Birthday

After balloons, we made a surprise and unplanned stop at the puppy store, which is always fun and almost always a mistake. By "Puppy Store" I mean the store where they sell real, live, puppies of dozens of different breeds. It's better than the zoo because you get to play with the adorable babies. A mistake, because I always want to take one home. Today, it was a particular Westie who was so unbelieveably cute, I could barely stand it. The boys loved her too.

2nd, Pizza.
Easy. They just opened a Cici's Pizza by our house. Cheap and honestly, not bad. Okay, FULL HONESTY- I love that joint. All-you-can-eat.

Funny Cici's story:
So, I went to wash my hands after playing with puppies and when I returned, Spencer had just knocked over his lemonade, which went EVERYWHERE. For being such a tiny cup, it sure made a mess. So, I alerted Javier, the busser and we moved over one table. He was very kind and mopped up the mess. Then, I was coming back to the table carrying a plate of salad in one hand and a plate of pizza in the other. I was wearing my crocs... the floor was wet... I'm clumsy when pregnant... do you see where I'm going with this?

I biffed it, BAD! It was like slow-motion, salad flying the air like confetti, pizza shooting out of my hands. Me, landing on my hands and knees amid pizza and salad. Javier to the rescue. Derek was trying to get to me to save me but the table was in the way. Javier helped me up and cleaned up our mess, AGAIN. Nice guy. I managed to mess up my knee, but otherwise remained unscathed.

So, after pizza, the next request on my King's list was a BLUE birthday cake. I don't know why he wanted blue, but he did. So, we made the cake.

From Henry's 3rd Birthday

The red ran and blended together, and well, it was blue. VERY VERY blue. UGLY but Blue. Henry completely LOVED it.

From Henry's 3rd Birthday

Henry HATED the singing of "Happy Birthday" like, A LOT.

From Henry's 3rd Birthday

Finally, a present.

From Henry's 3rd Birthday

I asked him what it was and he was VERY happy to reply, "PIPES!" and then immediately went to play.

From Henry's 3rd Birthday

From Henry's 3rd Birthday

Should you ever need a present for a three-year-old boy, a 10ft PVC pipe, all cut up and a bunch of connectors, and seriously, hours, even days of fun are coming your way. Henry is very "engineer" like when it comes to his play. He takes great joy in creating stuff. So, he played with some pipes that I played with as a kid at my parents' house over Halloween, and was IN LOVE. So, he got his very own for his birthday.

Seriously, $7 and he is in heaven.

I asked Henry if he had a fun birthday and his reply, "Yeah, I like cake. And I opened a present."
And that is all it takes.