Wednesday, April 22, 2009

birthday celebration


i am so behind in posting, obviously, since i'm just now putting pictures up of aedan's birthday, which was april 7.

note to self and interested readers: don't celebrate a kid's birthday for more than a day. it just feeds their i-wantness and egocentrism. another note: don't feed your child to gators. sign above courtesy of gatorland. gee, i didn't realize babies weren't supposed to swim with gators...!)

we kicked off the celebration with cookie cupcakes (recipe here) that i took to aedan's school right before the end of the day...the day before spring break. for some reason, i was totally intimidated to face a classroom of 30 kindergartners. i spent the entire day before trying to come up with ways to get around it. but aedan had specifically asked me to bring something to the school for his birthday, so how could i say no? "i'm sorry, but mom is really freaked out by 5-year-olds except when they are my own kid." i have a feeling he would have rolled on the floor laughing at this one. (for someone as insecure as i am, i have been "blessed" with a family of people who love to heckle me about said insecurities. glad i can help hone those skills...)


even though i felt like gulliver among the lilliputians, luckily for me everyone seemed to like the cookies and no one tried to tie me up and hold me hostage, so all in all it was a success i think. 

saturday we took a trip about an hour from here to gatorland. one highlight includes fake gator wrestling, where people sit on a gator's head and pose for pictures. one woman (yes, adults waited in line for this; it shocked me too) had a mini skirt so short i think she flashed everything as she tried to maneuver straddling that poor gator's neck. where is PETA when you need them? another highlight included listening to redneck and british dialects at the same time. i don't know why, but there were tons of people from europe there the day we went, and then there were tons of people from neighboring swamp-land. and southern and british dialects mix together like oil and water...




(note the very large gator in the bottom left corner area. i didn't even notice him until i was editing the photo!)


ok, next comes an embarrassing admission: aedan still doesn't know how to ride a bike. we accept full blame for this. we have lots of (good) reasons: it's too hot, our driveway sucks, we live on a busy corner with lots of crazy drivers coming around the corner too fast, we have mosquitoes and flying roaches (ok, not during the day for the latter, but still), we were both late bike-riding bloomers, and the list goes on. we thought maybe buying aedan a new bike would spur his interest in actually trying to RIDE the bike.

so he got to pick out a cool (and cheap!) one and rode it around the store so much i thought he was going to start knocking things off the shelves. he loves it, and hopefully by this summer he will be riding like a pro.


i know i already shared a picture of aedan with his cake in the previous post, but i wanted to share this parting shot of him thinking of what to wish for.



next entry, easter! (i told you i was behind!) see you soon!

2 comments:

Kellie said...

You had to stay at the classroom while they served the treats? That is intimidating. I would have guessed (not having a school aged child) that mom's just dropped stuff off.

That lady at gatorland is one of the reasons I don't mind carrying a diaper bag. You never know what you'll need to clean up with wet wipes!

Amelia Plum said...

i absolutely love the gator baby warning sign. someone should make a book up of those and all the silly warnings on childrens toys, you know the ones on little baby doll car seats where it will tell you not to use it as a real car seat.