The Big Day!

Carter is six!  I have no idea how that's possible.  You'd think after 10 years of kid birthdays I'd be used to this by now, but these little buggers just keep getting bigger and birthdays just make it extra obvious!

We finished off Valentine's Day/birthday eve with completing his 100th Day of School project.  Carter had the option to do a shirt or a standalone project featuring 100 objects.  I went through Pinterest for an assortment of doable ideas, and he picked a pom-pom gumball machine.  I cut out the gumball machine parts because I didn't think the kid scissors could handle it, and we only had one shot with the materials we had.  I did the outlines of the gumball machine front but let Carter color it in and write "100¢" (because $100 seemed a bit steep).  I had to hold each pom-pom so he could squeeze the glue, but he did them all! It turns out that gluing a hundred "gumballs" takes a long time, so thank goodness for those wind chill days we had off school a couple weeks back, because it bought us a couple more days to get this done.  The strep got in the way a bit, too, so we needed every bit of time we could get.  But it turned out great!

In addition to it being his birthday, Friday was also the 100th day of school, so it was an extra special day--which was why I checked his strep sooner so he wouldn't miss it!  Earlier in the year Carter had talked about having us come to eat lunch with him for his birthday, but he hadn't mentioned it leading up.  However, I knew that if we didn't do it and it occurred to him later, he'd be upset we hadn't done it, so we planned on bringing him a special lunch together.

He was so excited to see us as his class walked to lunch, and it was so cute to see him leading his class down the hall with his special birthday crown!  As we sat down to eat we had to grab a selfie!

He was loving his special Happy Meal lunch and it was fun seeing him in his element!

Elementary school lunch was interesting.  I'd forgotten how chaotic and loud it is!  They actually had to turn off the lights twice to remind the kids to quiet down, but I think it was a lost cause with it being the 100th day of school and the day before winter break.  It was fun to see some of the 100th day shirt designs that kids were wearing.

After lunch we headed back to the classroom so Carter could do his book sharing and we could be there when they sang to him.  He shared a birthday book that my mom recorded for him a few years ago.  He likes to hear her read it, and we try to read it on or around his birthday each year.  He had the idea to bring that in to share, which turned out well since he can't read it yet.  He could just hold it up as the book read itself!

Everyone really seemed to like the book, and then he got up so his friends could sing to him (but he chose the "no cha cha cha" version, for the record).

It was crazy to think that after that day he wouldn't see his friends for two more weeks.  This tonsil stuff is no joke, which his teacher reiterated on our way out, as her son just had his out a few weeks ago.  Her warning was that days 5-10 were brutal.  Which is why I find it so odd that a friend told me that her kids were both back to school about five days later.  Whatever...our doctor wants a full 10 days out of school and another week with no gym.  Whatever gets him through without complications is fine with me.

After a few crazy hours back at work trying to finish up whatever I could before having most of the next two weeks off, we were back at home and it was time for presents!

I couldn't resist the $1 mylar "6" balloon I found at Target!

Ready to open!

 I won't lie--this wasn't my best year for presents.  I'm not sure what the issue was, but it's some combination of knowing he has too many toys already; the fact that he spends a disproportionate amount of time with screens instead of said toys; and preoccupation with the upcoming surgery and all that goes along with it.  Normally right after Christmas I have a birthday present game plan based on what we can build on from Christmas and what new interests he starts developing in that month and a half.  But this year that just never happened.  Luckily Craig had a plan instead, and while I didn't have as many of the fun little touches that I normally do, he was happy anyway!

Two dinosaur-themed Hot Wheels cars!

This box had a Star Wars shirt, an easy reader Tyrannosaurus Rex book, and this random grenade-looking toy with a Lego-compatible Halo character in it.  He saw it before Christmas at Five Below, Craig bought it later, and it didn't fit into the Christmas plan so it stayed in the gift stash.  And it might have stayed there until Easter except that Carter mentioned it again a night or two earlier!  He was so excited to get it!

This box had an assortment of Scooby-Doo Imaginext figures to go with the Mystery Machine he got at Christmas.  A couple came from Amazon and the others came from Toys 'R' Us...in Canada!

A hot dog food truck with Shaggy and a Mummy, Daphne and Mr. Hyde, Velma and the Snow Ghost, and Scooby in the garbage can with the Funland Robot

His last gift was a Hot Wheels haunted house with a bat where you can launch the car at different spots to bust into the house, get the bat to pop out, or knock the bat over.  He held it up in the air in victory, which was cute.

He immediately wanted to try that one out!

We went out to dinner at Red Robin, and after a little extra time to play with his toys, it was time to head to bed.  It must have been a long day, because he went down without an issue and Mommy and Daddy were in bed by 11pm as well.  We're trying to have a reasonably fun family weekend since Craig is off for the first time in a while and it's sort of our last hurrah before a couple weeks being mostly housebound.  We had Jacob's basketball game today (four points including a three-pointer), and he has practice tomorrow, but the goal is to fit in The Lego Movie 2 somewhere in there, and maybe one more meal of choice for Carter.  We'll see how we do.  But the countdown is officially on!