::eight::

Honestly I can't believe I'm saying this, but my old Max turned EIGHT this week!! YIKES!!

This is his first birthday where we haven't been traveling or visiting somebody for years. Last year we were in AZ for a work trip, and both years before that we were visiting family in Utah. So we were home, and we had a pretty fun day I think.

Max got to have a pretty lazy day. There was no school for him that day and he got to open a pretty awesome present in the morning--old school hot wheels tracks.

He played with them all morning. Then he got to watch some Sponge Bob, which hasn't happened in a while since he was mimicking the super annoying voices ALL the time. He was banned for weeks. He got a chance to try again since it was his birthday. (So far so good on the annoyingness.)

Later in the day Max got to go to his karate class. Then we all went and had a delicious dinner which included chocolate malts. Mmmm.

After that we finally made it home for cake and presents. HOMEMADE cake for the first time in a while.
It was tasty.

And the candles and singing are 100% up Max's alley.

I think he had a great day. And his actual friend party was the following day. I'll report on that later.
But for now, here's my favorite birthday picture of all for you.

Good night!

::before & after::

Before:

You've seen it--you know how shaggy he was.

During:

(this morning--we finally found someplace to take him and since he had the day off school we got to have a nice peaceful morning appointment.)
After:

He looked pretty happy when we got done with the cut, but then when we went to the office and all the ladies made a fuss over him he got all embarrassed and wore his hood for the rest of the day.
Then tonight he told me he hated the haircut because he looks like somebody else! I think he still looks pretty unmistakably like my Max. He'll ease into it. Besides, I don't really think he hates it.

I mean, look at his face. Could anybody take this face seriously?

::souvenirs::

Last week Max went on a field trip with school. He was way excited to ride on the bus, and I was way cool to not freak out and make him stay home after the American Fork band bus incident not too long ago. Anyway, enough about motherly worries. I volunteered to go along and assist, but of course in true Rhode Island public school fashion they didn't have any parents come along.

But this post isn't about any of that.

They went to a farm, took a hay ride and got to pick out a pumpkin to bring home. At least that's what I gathered from my son's very non-descriptive description of the day.
His pumpkin was cute, and he liked it although he was very glad to hand it over to me when I picked him up. He's kinda wimpy and doesn't like to carry heavy things--wait, really anything that weighs more than an old cell phone. He'll carry an old cell phone around all day.

But, here I am sidetracked again.
Here's the man with his pumpkin.


I brought him home and fed him lunch. I cleaned up the kitchen and was sweeping the floor when he suddenly said, "oh! I almost forgot! Look at what I brought home!"
He reached in his pocket and pulled out a big handful of hay.

Seems that they did actually go on a hay ride! This is the same boy who would come back from his preschool in Kansas City with pockets full of the big gravel in the playground. I'd have to go and put it back all the time.

I was really please (as you might imagine) to have the hay hit my newly swept up floor. He gathered it up--with no small amount of encouragement--and took it outside to his "house" which is our little shed in the backyard.

What a goofball. I think he was more excited about the hay than the pumpkin. Oh well, there's no accounting for taste, right?

::highland fling--more::

Max went crazy dancing to the tunes his Grandpa Ken's band was playing at the Highland fling. He was seriously rocking out. The fact that he was wearing his awesome sunglasses and Uncle Kelly's hat didn't hurt the coolness factor either.
I'm just glad Kelly had his little camera to capture some of this dancing, because it was seriously hilarious. The best stuff was when he didn't realize anybody was watching. His serious face was so funny. For the last song he went right up to the front and rocked out. I've never seen more intense dancing.




Goofball.

::no pinching::

Nobody could pinch us today.



Well I guess they could've tried, but they wouldn't have had a leg to stand on.

To celebrate the holiday Max and I made cupcakes. Not the kind of cupcakes recommended by all the cooking blogs, filled with some sort of liqour, but just yummy chocolate ones, with greeny green frosting of course.

We packed some up to share with friends. Eating all of those would ourselves would NOT be a good way to celebrate the holiday!

Max insisted on photos of him pretending to eat the cuppycakes.



Goofball.

::twisty::

Kris had a brilliant idea tonight. He thought we should go and buy Twister for Family Home Evening. We did and it was a blast.

Max was so excited about the game. He could hardly wait to start playing.

He kept saying "Wow, this is a hard game!" as he was doing splits and sliding around the game board.









It WAS a hard game! We all had fun, and we all got tired.
At the end Max was the spinner guy so Kris and I could play. He did a great job. It's definitely fun that he can read--it makes him more functional somehow.

(I beat Kris, by the way. He tried to cheat and knock me over, but it didn't work)

::not as intended::

I never really realized before that stories with morals could be taken the wrong way. Did you?

The other day Max and I were watching PBS. The show had a version of the Little Red Hen story. You know--the one where the hen needs to make bread and none of her friends would help her. They keep saying "Not I, Not I" to everything she asks for. Except then when she asks who will help her eat the food they all say they will. And she says no.
And the idea is that when somebody hears this story they'll realize that they need to help, right?

Well later that day I needed to make dinner. And I wanted to give Max something to do. So I asked him to come and help me make dinner. Guess what he said? Yep, "Not I" In those very words. You can imagine that didn't make me too happy.
And I thought, WOW. Can a story with a moral like that just completely fail? Fail so much that somehow it teaches him to do the opposite thing?

It reminded me of my parents friends a long time ago. Their little daughter loved the Sound of Music and watched it all the time. But did she love and pretend to be a Von Trap child? Or Maria? No. She pretended to be a nazi. She wore a little black leather jacket someone had given them all the time, and she would say "Heil Hitler" to people.
Not exactly the message the Sound of Music was going for.

So I'm thinking we'll be talking through the things we read and watch for a while. Let's get the right message, shall we?

Goofball.

::more dog park--not gross::

I hope nobody is bored with the dog park yet.
We go there a lot. It's close to our house, and poor Sultan needs a place to have fun.
When funny things happen there, sometimes they get to show up here.

The other day (a while ago, when it wasn't so cold outside that your ears would fall off--and when there were some leaves on the trees) we headed off for some dog park.

Sultan found some cousins to hang out with.

He was pretty excited about it.

And some lady in the background wore some weird socks. But that's not actually part of the story.

Max and Kris went off to play catch, as usual. And as usual some dogs tried to catch the ball when it was thrown to Max.

That gets on Max's nerves a little bit, so he quit the catch game when he saw a fun and exciting stick lying on the ground.

Wow. Sticks are fun. If you're four.

This dog was hanging around him, salivating over that stick.  Kris and I told him to throw it. So he did.

(this is actually a photo of him just before he threw the stick at ME, but that's another story altogether.)
Well guess what happened after he threw the stick for the dog?

This cute dog ended up with the stick. Max was very upset. He kept telling the dog that he hadn't meant to do it, and that's not what he wanted to happen!!
Eventually the dog gave up on the stick.

Ewww.
And boy with stick headed back out into the wild.

He's just not experienced enough to realize how dogs feel about sticks I guess. Sultan doesn't care about sticks at all, so I guess he has no reason to know.

that dogs love sticks!

I love how the tiny dog is chasing him so confidently, like he could actually do something, while the big guy who could just grab it straight out of his hands is just watching.
It was pretty hilarious.

But then evidently Max smelled something "stinky" (big shock at the dog park, right?) and so he went to do something else.
(check out the crazy dog in the background of that last picture. All four feet are way above the ground!)

He went to play in the shot put cage. Or whatever that is.

"Sultan, come! Sultan come! Sultan come!" Sultan does a bad job listening to Max and I. We're working on that currently.

Other dogs show up of course, but no Sul. He's kind of a butt that way.

He finally showed up. Then Max pretended to be a sad puppy in a cage.

Cute! Sad!

Then we went home.
And since there were still leaves on the trees I took a picture of one.

And here we are again at the end of one of my loooooooooooooong photo essays. If you made it to the end I hope you enjoyed it. Can't go wrong with the dog park (unless of course a dog mistakes you for a fire hydrant.)