Grant’s 6th

Grant’s at the age now where he really anticipates his birthday, counting down the months, weeks and days. He has a lot of expectations for his 6th year. In the past couple of months, he has made a couple of predictions:

• “When I’m 6, I’m going to take ballet”
• “When I’m 6, I’m going to be a football player”

(When I reminded him about the ballet, he said “I’m going to do both!”)

• And last night “Now that I’m 6, I’m going to drink Pepsi.” HA! 

Because it had been April since Mom and Dad been here and I’d done absolutely nothing with my flower beds, we had to do some last-minute landscaping on Saturday. If I don’t at least weed the flower beds, it is impossible for Mom to keep from doing some weeding while she’s here; she’s powerless to stop herself! So, the girls helped out a lot by weeding the flower beds, while I got some flowers and mulch.

Here are before and after shots:

Nothing too dramatic, but it’s amazing what a difference a few petunias and some mulch makes!

So, back to the Birthday Boy. Here he is, descending the stairs in all his glory. :-) I had to be quick with the camera – it’s a little blurry because he was moving so fast!!  Ha!

We had barbecue chicken, mac ‘n cheese, rolls and salad. The girls decorated nicely with streamers and the good dishes. One of these days, I’m going to try to be more on the ball and get a picture of the decorations and the dinner table! We’ve got 2 more birthdays to celebrate this year so here’s hoping.  :-)

He also requested “chocolate cake,” which around here translates to Mocha Layer Cake. (Grant: “No, I want chocolate cake.” Me: “Mocha Layer Cake is chocolate cake.” :-)

He raced us from the cake to the gifts. Yes, he was excited.  :-) Grant has been in a Spider Man phase lately. He’s not seen the movie – I don’t think he knows there is a movie – but is intrigued by the idea of Spider Man.  :-)  So, I bought several Spider Man gifts and also splurged on Spider Man wrapping paper, which you can just barely see in the next picture.

 

And here is the one gift I got a picture of Grant opening: a Cars coloring book. Why did I only get one picture? Because my camera battery died! Grrrr!!!!

I put the batteries in the charger and we watched him open the rest of the gifts, ate the cake and ice cream, then went outside to play for a while. We did this partly because his final gift couldn’t be wrapped and had to be brought up from the basement and set up. In order to capture this, I grabbed the partially-charged battery and started snapping away. Drum roll please (yes, I did that on purpose ;-)

 

Oh there’s been lots of excitement over this gift! I was at a Once Upon a Child back in March or April with the boys and Grant actually spotted this drum set on a high shelf. He pointed it out to me, but I smiled and said something like “that’s neat,” but inside I was thinking “No way!!”. When I told Mick about it that night, he said “Did you get it?” “How much was it?” So, I went back to the same store a week later, just intending to shop for Sarah’s birthday and I noticed it was still there. I spent about 15 minutes contemplating whether or not to get it before I finally decided to. It’s been hidden in our basement, covered with a tarp under the ping pong table ever since.

 

Contrary to my fears, he has NOT played the drums day and night, nonstop. :-) Like all the rest of the toys, he plays them in spurts. And if I do say so myself, he actually sounds pretty good!  :-)

And lastly, a stroll through the years …