Saturday, March 12, 2016

Birthday Weekend

I had a wonderful 30th birthday this year!! It started with taking James to school and then going to the gym for Zumba. The instructor surprised me with a birthday tiara and a present and another gym friend baked me cupcakes. We had a blast!! Everyone told me how young I was, so that made me feel good :)

After I picked up James from school, he and my mom went to the store and picked out flowers for me and my birthday cake. James was very opinionated about what they purchased. He was dead set on getting me a kids Mario and Luigi sheet cake, insisting that it was my favorite. My mom vetoed it and got a chocolate cake instead and James was very let down by it. :)

For dinner we went to a Japanese steakhouse where they cook the food in front of you. James and Rett were very impressed by the fire and by his knife skills. James' face says it all!

Rett looked a little scared, but when you asked him if he liked the fire he would say, "Cool! Fire!"

I had to get a picture of James' plate because it is so typical of meals with him. Every time the cook tried to put something on his plate (noodles, rice, chicken), James would hold his plate back and tell him "no, thank you". At one point he asked, "You not hungry?" and James had this pathetic face and said, "Yes I am". I whispered in his ear that he needed to be polite and not say out loud that the food was "gross" or "yucky" so that he wouldn't hurt the cook's feelings. I promised him that we would stop and get him chicken nuggets on the way home if he did that and he kept his word! He was very polite.

The next day we decided to visit the botanical gardens and check out the dinosaur sculptures. The boys had a blast! They loved checking out every nook and cranny of the place.

These two pictures made me laugh because if you look at James' face you can see how quickly he can go from calm to furious! He wanted to go around the gate to get close to the dinosaur and we told him that he couldn't. We joke with each other all the time that you will always know exactly what James is feeling because it shows on his face so dramatically.

We were amazed by the size of the leaves on this vine. Both of the boys could fit underneath it! Of course, they ran out of it before we could get a picture.

Making them pretend they love me :)

The next day we went to a park to watch a local model boat club race their boats. It was so interesting! The club mostly consisted of older, very serious men but James was oblivious to their worried glances. It always surprises me how the hobbyists at this sort of thing seem to have completely forgotten how fun it looks to little kids. We had the same experience at the model train expo, there too they seemed very grumpy that kids would get close to their prized possessions.

We walked by the sailboats first. James was not impressed.

Then we got to the other side of the lake where they had all sorts of remote controlled boats. There were huge battleships like these two, small battleships, a lobster boat, a yacht, and speed boats.

They were practicing putting their boats up to this miniature dock. It looked very difficult!

We found a spot by the water and sat and watched for awhile.

We went for a little walk and found some other boats under the pavilion. James was dying to explore all the parts of the boats and see how they worked. Then he said he hopes Daddy has the materials at home to built a boat because he wants to build one when we get home.

It was a fun filled weekend, a great way to celebrate the beginning of my thirties!

1 comment:

Happy said...

Happy Birthday!!! I just saw Megan Fox on Ellen saying she was turning 30, so knowing you're the same age as Megan Fox has to make it all okay. That's so nice of your friends at the gym. And SO funny about James and the cake he knew you wanted. Haha!! I'm glad you had a great birthday!