Yesterday was Greg’s 33rd birthday! And also Mother’s Day (officially). I’m REALLY glad those days only fall on the same day every once in awhile. (Next time – 2023)
So! I asked Greg what he wanted for breakfast a few days before and he said he’d just eat cereal. But I was up really early, did a ton of cleaning, and decided to make a real breakfast. So I made strawberry sauce, bacon, and chocolate chip pancakes. I’m usually the world’s worst pancake maker, but I think I’m getting better! I’m pretty sure every pancake was fully cooked and none were burned. A vast improvement!
Present time next, obviously.
Caden picked out a Switch pro controller and a bag of sunflower seeds to give Greg.
They were so giggly happy! If only it had lasted all day. (Ominous foreshadowing intended.)
Daddy is green.
Shepard was a little greedy in what gifts he picked to give! 🙂 First Greg opened a Lucas amiibo. It was apparently one of his favorites, and Annie chewed it beyond recognition a few weeks ago. Fortunately, I was able to find another one from a secondhand seller on amazon.
Not shown – a big bag of dark chocolate covered cherries. Now on to the main gift!
He was pretty excited!
Expert level Palace Cinema set.
I gave Greg a dancing Baby Groot and a gift card to Mod Pizza. Jack, Rory, and Annie gave him the newest Guardians of the Galaxy lego sets. Greg never buys things for himself, ever, so we like to spoil him when we can!
Annie’s always watching out the back window and it’s so dang cute!
Got out the older baby Groot and had them dancing together.
After present time, the guys played video games for awhile. I spent a long time getting ready and doing my nails as a little Mother’s Day time to myself. At some point during game time, Caden got super frustrated and switched over to his mean side. HOW do you get kids not to ruin special days?? It’s just so draining. Disappointing. Sad. Caden can be so great sometimes. And then the switch flips and he’s spewing as many insults as he can think of, hitting us, being totally uncooperative. I feel like maybe overall, in his lifetime, these episodes have gotten a little more spread out. But the older and bigger he is, the more intense he can be. I don’t know what to do about it. And it just plain sucked that he picked Greg’s birthday to act this way again. It’s almost always triggered by video games. Like 98% of the time. But video games are also his greatest happiness and the one thing he always wants above all else. So how do we make him happy without him turning into a monster???
Anyway. Around lunch we headed over to Greg’s parents’ house for the big Mother’s Day party. Shepard planted a second lemon tree to give Grandma. He was standing in front of it so she wouldn’t see it when they called her outside.
The big reveal!
The boys and their cousin Jeremiah spent most of the day climbing this tree. It was so beautiful!
The kids’ table. There were three girl cousins there too, but I think they were still playing in the sandbox. It was fun to see them having so much fun with other kids! Since they’re the only grandchildren on both sides of the family (for only two more months!!), it’s pretty rare that they get to hang out with the extended family little relatives. I’m glad they’ll have some of these fun memories that I so fondly remember from my own childhood of running wildly around with my cousins.
Taking a minute from the mega Mother’s Day celebration to remember Greg’s birthday. Those boys really wanted some cupcakes!
I guess Shepard insisted that Grandma buy trick candles, so they were all waiting for them to re-light.
Cindy and Melissa and the magnolia tree she gave her. If my neighbors didn’t have a gorgeous one in their backyard, I think this is a plant I’d want to get for myself too! So pretty.
That’s a lot of moms!
It was a very nice party. We only planned on staying for lunch, but Greg didn’t really want to go back home only to have Caden flip the switch again. Because it would have surely happened. 🙁 I wish he could have had the perfect day he would have wanted. But children are very unpredictable. Or perhaps predictable, because something always goes wrong.
Greg requested buffalo bacon pizza for dinner. Shepard and I made it together. It was good! My favorite little trick for buffalo pizza is adding buffalo cheese curds to it. It gives some big chunks of gooey cheese mixed in with the regular mozzarella.
Birthday dessert was peanut butter bars. They’re seriously the greatest dessert ever. Not so pretty, but super easy and delicious! Non salty side for Greg because he abhors the salty sweet combination (blasphemy!), and salty side for the rest of us. Because salty chocolate is AMAZING.
After dinner we got word that the crib Timmy and Brittany were looking at buying (from the Columbus garage sales) was still available and we had to go pick it up. We drove the car over hoping there was some way we could finagle it into the trunk with bungee cords. That most definitely wasn’t going to happen!! So I put the extra crib side and mattress in the trunk, drove back home, and “ran” back to meet them. It was about four blocks away – fortunately, but four blocks carrying a heavy crib feels like miles! It was hilarious, though. A really nice humorous way to end the evening. And we maybe worked off our pizza and peanut butter bars!
The rest of the night was pretty low key. We put the boys to bed and then started the second season of Masters of None. (So good!) I guess I can’t speak for him, but I hope he had a relatively nice birthday. I feel like pretty much all birthdays for everybody end up being a little bit of a let down. But we tried. At least he didn’t have to work! This is kind of an odd year with all four of us having weekend birthdays. And next year three of us will again.
Happy birthday, Greg! Happy Mother’s Day, everyone else! I hope you were treated like queens and had a wonderful day. And if you weren’t treated that way, then go out and do something for yourself asap. You’re in charge of your own happiness. 🙂 Be a little selfish. I definitely am this time of the year!
