The never-ending birthday festivus

Happy birthday, Little Henry. You are one lucky boy! All the people who love you celebrated your 6th birthday..... all. week. long.

Here are some of the highlights.

The Connors (even Gummy at midnight) create all sorts of celebratory street art.

How fun is it to see your name in lights on your way to school?

Yep, I'm 6.



Henry and Parks in the back seat.
Parker creates a fine hat in which to partay in. He wears it for 3+ hours.

All the buds at Subway. Parks, Hen, Timo, and Soph.

Henry is geeked up, to say the least.

Birthday week continues with Henry's first soccer game.

He's plays with 6 and 7 now. No more kindergarten babies.

Another party with some of the dudes at Boondocks.
Arcade games are his obsession. Especially if they shoot out tickets that can be used to by all things junk at the redemption counter*.

*see: a mother's patience

These are my lovely party assistants. I could not have pulled it off without them. They were my race car drivers and my laser tag chaperones.

I love these girls!

Andrew and Austin are wild boys. Seriously, the one on the right could have hustled me out of everything that I own.
Gotta love the Chinese handcuffs*.
*see patient mother at the redemption counter.

Ethan and Spencer are two cool cats.

Light saber. Awesome gift.

This is how fast Little moved all day and night at Boondocks.

For six hours, bless my heart.

Beautiful, patient Hillary ran the show on the golf course, too.

Sunday celebration with the fam.

You say you see the exhaustion in Mommy's face, yes?

I'm not even kidding. A Lambroghini even took Little for a ride on his birthday.

That is the face of, "Yes! It's Legos!"

Grandma Reynolds makes the requested cake.

She is masterful. She should build ships in bottles.

She should have her own book of cakes.

She is our Ace of Cakes.

This was the cherry on top of it all.

Thank you everyone for sending the good love Henry's way on his 6th birthday. He enjoyed it immensely!

Saturday nights, as they should be.

The wait is over.

Cue the championship flag.

Cue the Lion.

Cue the crazy people.

Cue the dad who acts like a boy at game time.

Insert a tie, which was darned-near a loss.

2-2

Add the happy family, and you have yourself some REAL fun!

Summer has officially started!

The road to financial independence begins with the tooth fairy

Henry's Problem: I love Lego's so much that it hurts inside to look at the Lego catalogue.

Solution: Ask Mommy for, "this, this, this, this, this, and oh, that one, too"

Problem: Mommy says, "We cannot buy all the Lego's that you wish for. They're expensive."
Solution: Ask Mom for just my top three wishes.

Problem: Mom says my birthday is coming up... in 21 whole days!

Solution: Must find out how money much is in that silly old bear!

So, for days, Henry and I have been planning to take all of his money to Target. Therein lies the holy grail... The Lego aisle.

We shaky, shaky, shaky all the coins out.


joy, yes?

Embarrassing scenes of me at the checkout with 10 lbs of coin keep me awake at night.
I suggest that we stop by the bank on the way.
Henry: "Are we setting up a bank account? 'Cause I don't wanna have them take care of my money." (the young boy has a point, there.)
Our bank has this nifty little self-serve coin-counting thingy. It was an absolute leap of faith for Henry to pour all of his life's savings into the deep, unknown abyss.

Pressing on with faith, Little scrapes it all away.
Finally, the machine gives us a tiny little piece of proof. A receipt.
$33.86 worth of proof.








Fast-forward.

I will spare you of the play-by-play inside Target. Just know that it involves 30 minutes of comparing, contrasting, cost-analysis, combining, questioning, obsessing, and many other levels of critical thinking that can occur inside a young, Jedi warrior's mind.
It was intense, but I loved witnessing every minute of it. It's a very hard lesson to learn that one does not have enough money to buy at least three-fourths of the Lego selection.


Luckily at this age, quantity rules over quality.
Look at this toothless, happy face.
Just enough to buy all four sets. Some good guys, and some bad guys.
Actually, Little had enough for just 3 sets. I chipped in for the 4th. Earnest children who save their money will always compel me to try to make up the difference.

Now for the show. Hillary and I helped with the assembly. Henry makes all the "guys," but he can just about put the rest together by himself.

Ownership is a beautiful thing.

Henry's comment as we drove home.

"I need to loosed more teeth."
Good job, little buddy. I'm proud of you!