Oh, he was the most excited I’ve ever seen him, I think. We’d planned a big day. Nana and Poppa came down to visit, which was one big thing, but we also filled the day with family activities in lieu of a party with his classmates. I like it when the kidlets agree to those. Though there might have even been a sliiiiiight bit of influencing from Mum and Dad, LOL.
Birthday kids in our house always get to choose a treat cereal for breakfast. We don’t usually go for the high-sugar stuff so clearly, on a birthday one really does deserve a sugar-rush first thing in the morning, right? J chose Froot Loops, just about the worst thing on the shelf.
I kept my mouth shut.
Present time netted the boy a Geelong football (Aussie Rules!) guernsey from Nana and Poppa, and a Ripley’s Believe it Or Not book, a Yo Ho Diablo whatsit, and a new game for the PS3 from Mum, Dad and Siblings. We’re all still trying to work out that Diablo thing. None of us can do any tricks. J’s favourite part? The instructional DVD that accompanied it, LOL.
Then we hit a local play arcade down at the beach. I was surprised Talented Hubby agreed to this - at $35 per child (for 2 hours unlimited water slides, games, bumper cars etc), we dropped over a hundred bucks just on this one activity. This is way extravagant for us. Smooches TH, because the kids had an absolute riot. Because it’s so expensive we usually avoid places like this, and Saturday was the first time the kids had done the water slide, which they LOVED. They probably got their money’s worth just on that alone.
Afterwards, we did something really simple and fun for lunch. We don’t live too far away from the beach so we bought a couple of large bags of hot chips (thick fries to you Americans, LOL) and a tub of gravy from a local takeaway place and sat next to the beach and gobbled them up. The seven of us - our family of five plus the grandfolk - had nice full tummies for only a few bucks, instead of the $50 we would have forked over at McDonald’s. Which is just as well, considering how much we’d just spent at the arcade, LOL.
We were exhausted when we returned home. Moo ended up taking a nap for three hours, which, for a nearly-7 year old, hasn’t been a common occurrence in our house for years. MIL and I hit Spotlight (like the US’s Joanne’s?) to buy some supplies - her for a project she needed to complete for her workplace and I bought some bits and pieces for a Super Top Secret Project I have in the works (keep an eye out for that in the next few weeks :) I love Spotlight. I wish I could live there, right on the half size beds made up with their range of sheets. Which is odd, because once the fabric and notions get home, they remain in the shop bags for weeks and weeks, if not forever. You could say I have a teensy problem with follow-through, LOL.
Dinner was the highlight of the day. For about a year now, TH and I have been altering our family’s takeaway habits from a once a fortnight trip to McD’s or the other main takeout places to a once ‘every three to four weeks’ deal at a sit down restaurant. Nothing fancy - most of the time we just go to the local pasta restaurant with it’s simple meals and free gelato - but now that the kids are older, they’re better equipped to deal with a restaurant scene and we figured they needed the practice. So we spend a little more, but go a little less often, and it works out. We get a nicer meal and a better family experience.
For J’s birthday, we decided to do something different and hit the local Chinese restaurant. I hadn’t had Chinese (except for the odd ‘producton line’ food court fare) in years. We chose a banquet meal so we had all these courses coming out - it was awesome. The kids were enamoured with the Lazy Susan in the middle of the table and we very nearly had an embarrassing accident involving centrifugal force, soy sauce and some white pants - it was hastily avoided, thank goodness, with some sharp words and threats to tape their arms to the sides of their bodies for the rest of the evening. We amused ourselves between courses by snapping photos, including some clear gems that Talented Hubby made me delete immediately, just in case they ended up on the blog (that man knows me too well :P) After eating so much we were fit to burst (bye bye diet, eat least for that night :P) we headed home for cake. J had requested a choc mud cake with four different types of candy as decorations. Because I’m a pushover and hey, MY BOY JUST TURNED TEN AND HOW CAN I BE THE MOTHER OF A TEN YEAR OLD ALREADY! I JUST TURNED 29 YEARS OLD!!!, he got exactly what he asked for. Suprisingly all that sugar so late at night seemed to work the opposite way to normal and he was burnt out and asleep ten minutes after the cake. And then the adults all collapsed with very nerdy cups of tea and vowed never to repeat the day again. The End.
A full day, but a really good one. Not a bad time for a brand-new ‘double digits’
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