Shipwrecked!: Day 33: The Day You Turned Seven (On Easter)

Today is the day. The little 7 pound, 12 oz bundle of crying babyness is now SEVEN years old.

Fun fact: this is the third time I've done a "The Day You Turned...." post about Calen on this blog. For a fun look into history, here's his third and fourth birthdays.

This year shocked me more than most. Seven is old, which means I'm old. He is at the threshold of not being called a "little" kid anymore.

Wow.

A million years ago (seven), my BFF Allison mentioned that she had looked up when Easter was for the next ten years or so and that Easter would land on Calen's 7th birthday. I laughed because at the time the concept of my little butterball infant Calen turning 7 was beyond my brain capacity. Calen being 7 was like, a million years from now.

Yet here we are.

Normally, the kids' have their friend parties on the weekend before or after their actual birthday, and their actual birthday is family day. The tradition is usually the same: birthday pancakes in the morning, a fun activity in the day (if Daddy isn't working), open presents from extended family in the afternoon, go to the restaurant of their choice for dinner, and then go to Toys R Us afterwards where they get to pick out their present from Mommy and Daddy.

Being that it's not only Easter but my inlaws are here also, that made today a little more complicated.

Okay, a lot more complicated.

So, we got up way early (Calen was already awake of course) and did their small Easter baskets and birthday pancakes:

Then, rushed off to church for the early morning Easter service. Which was probably the best church service I've ever been to in my life. Seriously.

After church, we came home and I promptly took a huge tote full of easter eggs (that we filled yesterday) and hid them all over our side garden. Up in the trees, in the soccer net, all over the ground, in the bushes. And then the boys and the little neighbor girl had an Easter egg hunt:

Camden is clearly ready.

Climbing trees for eggs

egg hunt snack intermission!

After the egg hunt, Easter was officially declared over and it was strictly Calen's birthday from there. We had lunch and Calen got to open his presents from family. Highlights of the year included roller skates (from his grandparents) and a Kindle Fire kids edition (from Mom and Dad). Since Calen's birthday activity of choice was the races yesterday, we laid low for an hour or so playing games on the Kindle (while Cam was attached to Calen's shoulder non stop to watch, thus earning the new nickname "Barnacle").

Because it's Easter and that continues to complicate birthdays, we switched around the evening and went to Toys R Us first since it closed early today. This year we decided Calen was old enough to be given cashMONEY, and could pick out whatever he wanted as long as he didn't go over the total amount of cash he had. He was very thorough and thoughtful and was cute watching him put things back so that he could afford something different.

Poor Cam is sick with a cold and holiday'd out and didn't even wake up from the car through the store until we had been there for an hour.

The very first thing Calen picked out was a .99 matchbox car. ONE matchbox car. He picked through the 100s of cars on the wall and pulled out just one. He tossed it into the cart and happily started marching down the aisle mentioning that he hopes he has enough to get a few more things.

He had $80 to blow between us and relatives that sent birthday money. I told him I was certain he had enough.

In the end, after a lot of careful consideration, counting, putting things back and deciding what was more important to him, he picked a Minecraft pickax/sword thing, a bow and arrow, a Lego set and his one single matchbox car.

After that we went to Calen's dinner of choice: Panda Express for Orange Chicken.

Except, we didn't go to Panda Express, because Panda Express is closed on Easter.

I knew this in advance, and had called around various Chinese restaurants in the area to make sure they were open today. We ended up going to Chopsticks in Petaluma, which has some seriously delicious orange chicken. Calen was happy and we were happy.

Side note: you should see Camden go at a plate of orange chicken. The "kid that won't eat anything" ate an adult portion of orange chicken and didn't leave a single piece left on his plate.

We came home and did cake, including re-lighting trick candles which were a huge hit. And by then we were all exhausted and overtired so we threw in Peanuts movie again (Calen's choice) and called it a night.