Watch him grow right before your eyes....

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He wanted a pirate hat cake this year to extend his treasure chest theme from last year. The cake itself was pretty easy which I was grateful for. He told me that if it was a pirate cake he needed to have lots of gold and silver and jewels around like last year!

I think the booty was more exciting than the cake. He went to Winco with me to help pick it out. I'm in love with Winco's big giant bins of everything! You can pick out 10 silver wrapped kisses, 5 gold wrapped chocolate coins, 10 gold wrapped peanut butter cups, etc. Whatever you want and how much you want of it.

It's a good thing we took pictures on Thursday night after we finished the cake because when we woke up Friday morning the middle had fallen over backwards. Ooops! I should have snapped a picture of it down but all I could think of was fixing it before he saw it.

I had to prop up the back with a mug but....

the front looked pretty good. The frosting had a few wrinkled spots

and the top had a fault line between the 2 cakes that wasn't there before but it worked out just fine! He hardly noticed anything was amiss.

I let him open some of his new clothes before school.

He was thrilled with his soccer clothes from Grandma & Papa.

Friday night was candle blowing out and cake eating time.

Several years ago I came up with a birthday policy. Parties every other year!

Because I have so many bdays close together, this was to save my sanity. The idea was that my close bdays like Mason & Samantha in May and Carly & Rachel in June be on alternate years so I would only have one party in May and one in June to pull off~

but somehow Mason & Samantha got on the same circuit and both had parties 2 years ago.

This spring I was not looking forward to 2 parties and just didn't bring it up at all. I decided to see what they would say..

awful mom?

Whatever your opinion...

I was going for sane mom.

About a week before his birthday Mason said "Mom.. Can I have a family party this year?"

YOU BETCHA!

What a relief. What a sweet boy. I was so grateful.

We had his birthday dinner: Spaghetti, breadsticks, salad.

His Big sisters both had social events that evening that I let them go to. (More cake for the rest of us! ) So,the youngest 3, Mark & I took Mason to go pick out a movie he wanted to watch. He chose Home Alone 2, technically a Christmas movie which Mark has serious issues with (watching holiday movies out of holiday context is a serious no-no at our house) yet Mark didn't say a thing, only "so this is really the one you want huh?" I think he was thrilled to not have to watch anything animated.

We came home and had cake and then Mason, Samantha & Jacob started playing together made up games and had a blast.

(New scriptures from Gma & Papa)

One of the games involved hiding cheese balls around the kitchen and front room area and letting Samantha and Jacob find them and eat them.

I knew that one was going to get messy but hey... The next day was Saturday when I'd make them do their chores anyway.

Other than his beautiful new scriptures, he didn't really get anything big. He got a lot of books from Mark and I and was just so sweet and grateful for what he had. He loved his dollar store army guys so much from Samantha I went and bought him another bag and he was so grateful for those.

I love him for his happy smile.

I love him for his generosity.

I love him for his goofy make you laugh antics.

I love him for his snuggly sweetness.

I love him for his bambi eyes.

I love him for his gratitude over what he has and his not worrying about what he does not have.

I love him.