"Coming of Age"

The birthday boy a couple of weeks ago, during a family trip to Clemson.

Evidently, there's a hobbit that lives in our house.  Cullen's birthday was this week and since it's the big one- if you're a hobbit, when I asked what kind of cake he wanted, he said he wanted a hobbit cake.  Normally, I only do themed cakes for kids... but I took this as a challenge.  What exactly is a "hobbit cake"?

He was out of town for his actual birthday on Wednesday, so we celebrated yesterday.  I reread the first chapter in Fellowship of the Ring for ideas.  Thinking that hobbits probably didn't have "birthday" cakes, but rather a wide variety of more savory cakes and knowing that lots of food should be involved.  It was a fun day of planning... lots of questions about hobbits from little boys.  Too bad hobbits aren't real and we just spent a whole day learning about the characteristics and culture of a fictional creature.  In the end though, I'm pretty sure at least the 3 that can talk now know how old Daddy is.  I'm also quite certain that they will be very excited whenever we decide to start reading The Hobbit to them.

We started our planning with the boys making cards for daddy, while I searched for more ideas about hobbit food.  Honestly, that first chapter of the book tells a lot about the party, but not the specific food types or kinds of cakes, aside from every available food in the local vicinity and plenty more from neighboring areas.  Potatoes, mushrooms, carrots, cheeses, beer, wine, tea cakes, etc, I can remember well enough from the books.  Here's the catch though... this particular hobbit doesn't care for cheese, mushrooms, or carrots, and as you probably already know if you're reading this, we only drink milk, water, and grape juice in our house.  OK.   Try something English!  We decided on Bangers and Mash (which we have had at the Rose and Crown, in the United Kingdom Pavilion at Epcot.)  This had the added perks of: #1 everything is prepared separately, #2 is basically sausage, which the boys love and #3 Blaise only likes his potatoes smashed.  It was a big hit.  Sides of salad and potato bread fresh from the bread machine.  We also had strawberries in the house (they were on sale earlier this week), so I whipped some cream and we had strawberries and cream for dessert.  Still no brilliant cake idea, so I just made a chocolate birthday cake... to look like a hobbit hole.  LOTS of questions about hobbit holes, for hours after I mentioned it.

Hobbit hole cake... complete with a cabbage garden.  Please disregard the weird colored chimney and patio stones.  We need to buy more food coloring.

I think they liked it.

Naturally, we don't normally have all these things in the house, so I had to run out and pick up a few things... sausage and whipping cream mainly.  (And Zyrtec, see below.)  Cullen had mentioned he needed some new undershirts, so I grabbed those while we were out and the boys wanted to know if that was Daddy's birthday present.  I said, I guess it can be.  We're really not big birthday present people, we just buy each other what we need when we need it.  They, not surprisingly, didn't think that was adequate, so they picked out a few bags of Easter candy as well.  We got home and they wrapped it all.  By themselves.  Without any help at all.  They asked for wrapping paper, and I suggested they just use white paper and decorate it.  They did just that.  

All in all, a great celebration last night, but mostly it was just really nice to have Cullen home.  We don't like it when he travels.  Maybe if they were older we would have had sparklers too... I doubt we could come up with fireworks that look like a dragon.

Zyrtec... allergy season is upon us.  Heavily upon Scott in particular.  Boy is miserable, but of course, he loves to be outside.  We are switching to Zyrtec to see if it helps more than Clariton and we'll probably be heading to the doctor to ask about allergy shots if it doesn't help more.  This week, Scott caught a tree frog while they were out playing in the yard.  Blaise caught about 10 caterpillars, which he pronounces catapulters.  It's not hard, you have to walk through a cloud of them, the tiny green variety, every time you go on the back porch.  Interestingly they decide that each of these creatures they catch is going to be their "pet".  So they built a little home for the tree frog in the red bucket and managed to come up with enough boards and sticks to cover it... well enough it didn't escape or suffocate.  I convinced Scott to let it go this morning, since it's been raining, "so it wouldn't drown."

Scott and Blaise and their "pet" tree frog.

Michael needs to take gymnastics... at least that's how it looked the other day.  This one is wild.

Saving the best for last... the long awaited... FINALLY... at 16 months and a week Daniel walks!  It's also been observed that he has a good arm, so don't  upset him.  He can throw wooden blocks, books, food, and just about anything else as well as he can throw the ball.