Matthew’s Birthday

On July 25 we celebrated Matthew’s 4th birthday.  I cannot believe that our baby is four years old.  The time really does fly by.  It seems so very long ago that he was a fussy crying newborn baby with his big brother James’ watching out for him.  Moving has really distanced that time as well as it seems like another era in our life … back when we lived in the city.

We celebrated Matthew’s birthday for two days.  Since his birthday was on Monday we had my family down on Sunday evening to celebrate Matthew’s birthday, as well as Marietta’s birthday. 

My birthday “cake” idea came from Amy (see here and here).  Thanks Amy for the cute idea!!  I stood in the kitchen and had a debate … do I go with the safe way of making it and do it with box cake and such, or do I be faithful to our diet and make it gluten free.  Realizing that I have to stop cheating and start learning to keep us on the diet more consistently, and that I was in control of this situation (it’s a little different when you go to someone elses party) .  So I went gluten free.  It was disappointing that it did not look as real, but I had expect this since I know that gluten free stuff does not look like regular baking (hence I had the debate about which to do).  With a little imagination one can see what I was trying to get at … and it tasted good, an added bonus as it was all recipes I adjusted and made up that night.

We did not tell Matthew that he was having a birthday party on Sunday night.  He knew his birthday was on Monday but had no idea about Sunday night.  I did not want to listen to him all day at church asking about his birthday party.  Grandpa and Grandma came for supper and then we sent him outside to play and quickly got the cake and decorations set up.  He was pretty excited when he discovered it all.

We ran into a bit of a problem with the cakes … Matthew could not guess what they were … likely due to the fact that he has almost never had a hamburger.  Our kids are not hamburger and hotdog fans, and I cannot eat hamburgers very well with my TMJ issues, so Rob’s the only one who really likes burgers and sometimes he’ll have one, but most of the time we don’t eat them except for when we go to other peoples houses.  Now that we do not eat much wheat hamburgers are even less of a option/priority in our house.  When we go out the kids always get nuggets, but Rob and I usually get burgers.  I guess they just didn’t really look very burger like … to small and tall … I tried.

He was further confused by these burgers because he does not like ketchup, mustard or relish.  He’s a plain boring type of guy and does not do dips or sauces but eats everything dry and plain.  I am not complaining about this (although I can’t understand how he likes it that way) as it sure makes his diet easier to keep.  So when we offered him his cake he didn’t want them because they had ketchup, mustard and relish on them … but after a lick of these toppings he was convinced that it was worth eating and even had ketchup with his french fries.

Regardless of whether they looked like burgers or what they looked like, Matthew loved them and he still talks about them now and asks if I can make them again.

 

Singing Happy Birthday.  Love that sheepish grin and cute smile.

 

Blowing out the candles.

Present time.

Matthew is the king of waterguns in our house.  He got one from Uncle Cameron last year and now four more from Grandpa and Grandma … lots of fun!

 

Although the party was mostly for Matthew, Marietta wasn’t completely forgotten!  They have reached an age where they no longer get presents when we have a family get together,  but simply have fun together with family.  But there always seems to be a little present that sneaks in :)

 

Monday was Matthew’s real birthday and he was spoiled rotten. The best part was I didn’t even go shopping for his birthday.  They were all items I had picked up on Kijiji or on sale over time.   So I just had to wrap things up and was all ready.

Kijiji is what helps us to spoil our kids.  This year he got thoroughly spoiled with train items.  I found a huge lot of wooden trains and train tracks and bridges and sheds and such on Kijiji and spent the money once and now I’m stocked up.  Each Santa and Birthday he gets more train stuff, and because I have such a huge lot of them he gets quite a bit since I don’t want to hold on to it so long that he outgrows the stuff before I get around to giving it all to him.  Matthew loves his wooden train track and trains.  He doesn’t actually watch much of Thomas the Train, never really has, but he took to the train track when he was little (was originally James’) and continues to play with it very well.  He has a very good imagination and once he gets into his own little world, his trains talk and have a grand old time and he spends a lot of time playing with them.  If he hasn’t been playing much with it, then I will pack away the track and clean up the area (love it when it’s packed away and we can just walk through the kitchen/living room without stepping over the stuff), but usually the next morning he’ll be asking me to build a new track, and once he has a new track made it’s like a whole new toy and away he goes again.

Spencer the Train

A shed and a watch gate.

This backpack has been on my gift pile a long time (I bought it for James) and now Matthew is finally old enough to enjoy it … and enjoy it he does.  He’s thrilled to have his own backpack for when we go away or when he needs to take stuff with him somewhere.  And since Matthew requires food with him whenever he goes away it’s very handy and used a lot and he’s just thrilled that’s he a big boy with a school bag now.

Another cheap Kijiji find.  I got it some time ago when Matthew was in his Jack the monkey obsession phase.  I realized that he should have a helmet anyways for when he goes skating and looked for a while to try find one with a glass visor so that he could use it for snowmobiling too … but did not have any luck in that area.  So I finally gave up and just went with this one since it was pretty close to free.  This has restarted Matthew’s love for Jack and he has since been watching the video a bit more and playing hockey again!! 

  

Mega Blocks was the other deal find we got him.  He’s been trying to be more creative with his blocks but did not have enough to make much, so when I seen these on sale I decided to get him a bit more before we switch him over to the “real” (small) lego.  These are the medium size ones.  We still have to work on his ability in this area because his idea of playing with the blocks is mom makes something and he plays with it once it’s made.  But that will come in due time!

Matthew was just thrilled about this one. Cranky the Crane. He had been using his imagination in his area already and would steal my kitchen utensils to use as cranes, but now he has a real Cranky and Crane.

 

Since our pool was not yet up (it was half up but we needed a plug for it before we could finish filling it up) we headed over to Ike and Heather’s to enjoy their pool since they were on holidays.   Ange and kids came also.  Rob worked in the office while the kids swam and then Dave joined us and we all had supper before heading off to soccer.