What-What?! Week of December 22nd

This past week, we celebrated Corwin's 10th birthday.  We had super-chocolatey ice cream cake, presents, and hit up Red Robin for dinner.

Corwin was pretty excited about his gifts

I can't remember what he was laughing about, but he was very amused by it

When he realized he was getting Lego :)

His other presents were some Pokemon toys, a Zelda mug, and a DnD box set

What-What?! Week of December 23rd

Last weekend was Corwin's 9th birthday!

Recently, he's been big into Tolkien, reading The Hobbit and being very excited about Smaug.  To that end, he wanted a cake with a mountain on top, with a cave for a dragon.  I was able to deliver:

It's a simple vanilla cake with buttercream frosting, topped with a rice crispy treat mountain.  This is my first cake that required engineering skills; there are supports in the cake holding the mountain up, keeping the whole thing from squishing.

 

It was good!  Corwin got the mountain top.

 

And then presents!  He got some really good ones.

 

The folding green was greatly appreciated -- but it's burning a hole in his pocket!  I've talked him into waiting until after Christmas before spending it.

 

This was when he realized this present was going to be Lego.

His eyes tell the story here -- really, really excited.  I don't have any pictures from the other side of the table, where his siblings were sitting, but the reaction was similar. :)

This is a Hot Wheels mechanics shop with a gator in it -- the gator pops out and eats the cars (and your fingers too, if you're not fast enough!)

Hilda and the Midnight Giant

And the present the husband and I got him -- a Gameboy!

He has definitely enjoyed having this -- we got him one that has Zelda: Ocarina of Time built in, and a Pokemon game to go with it.  The requirement for playing on it has been to get his homework done, which he has been doing in record time (without mistakes!)

He also got this cute Minecraft set with a bunch of chickens.  There's a release on the back that makes the eggs fall into the chest!  It's pretty funny.

 

Building!  We've had his big set of Lego out in the living room for the past week, and it's gotten a lot of use.  I like the combination of pieces -- there's enough basic blocks in there that you can make whatever, but then enough eye balls and other unusual pieces that you can make it really wild too.

 

His first creation was a dragon!

We went out to Sonic for late lunch/early dinner, which is one of Corwin's current favorite restaurants.  This was the first time we all had gone to Sonic for food, and I believe my first time eating one of their burgers.

Oh, also:  Saffron decided to get a pixie cut:

It's so short!  I don't know what I think of it.  It's her hair though, not mine.

What-What?! Week of December 17th

Yesterday was Corwin's birthday!  He's eight now, and was very excited for his big day.

In the morning, the husband got out this Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game, which we had picked up one day from Goodwill:

It's a super-simplified D&D system, and pretty perfect for the kids.  Osric still needs a grownup to help him through the rules, but Saffron and Corwin were able to navigate the game with just a few reminders.

Saffron had a rogue, Corwin a cleric, Osric a fighter, and I played the wizard.  The first adventure is nice and short; we had to go save a unicorn from a band of goblins.  Funny enough, one of the biggest challenges was getting through the front door.  After several attempts to pick the lock and push down the door, we eventually just tore it to pieces.

Trying to open the door -- this roll mattered!

Rolling dice!

Learning to read the character sheet.

In the afternoon, we did presents and cake.  Corwin seems very happy with his presents; he's already put together two of the Lego sets, and he's working on the third one as a type now.  The Aquaman Lego set he got comes with glow in the dark pieces, which are a big hit.

Surveying the selection

He enjoyed the card

And the money -- though he hasn't spent it yet...

The husband picked Corwin up a set of Magic cards

He was way more excited about these than I was expecting -- these are the three most recent graphic novels in a series that he's been reading.  Corwin was so excited that he went over to specifically show his dad what he got.

We also bought him a model kit -- it's a snap together Star Wars AT-ACT walker (cargo AT-AT).

This was his face when I told him that the legs actually move -- from the reviews of it, it sounds like the model is rugged enough to survive some play.  Hopefully that is the case for him.

Then we did cake!  The cake itself could have gone better; shortly after I finished frosting it, the marshmallow filling started to ooze out.  It was still delicious, and not too oozy when we took pictures, but still.  I guess marshmallow needs to be reinforced with some powdered sugar or something...

He chose to decorate his cake with his very own Lego creations --  some heroes fighting a monster.

This year, we got him sparkler candles, which were pretty cool.

They were hard to put out though

At this point, he was starting to laugh because the ones he had blown out kept relighting

Just two left!  He got these ones out.

Eating cake -- this was good!

NOM NOM NOM, tasty!

Later, the husband and Corwin looked through his new Magic cards.

And Corwin worked on his Legos.

For dinner, we hit up a local pizza place called Mod Pizza -- each of the kids got to have their own individual pizza with custom toppings.  Corwin had what I'm calling "the meatlover's Hawaiian" -- it had pineapple, pepperoni, salami, and Italian sausage.  The husband had their "Caspian" pizza, which is a BBQ sauce pizza -- a little weird.  The rest of us had more normal fair.  Overall, very tasty as well!

What-What?! Week of December 18th

Snowed again yesterday, and then again today.  That's enough of that, don't you think? xP

We celebrated Corwin's 7th birthday yesterday!  It was alright.  We didn't really play any games, because Corwin would rather play with his gifts, and some friends had to go home early because they were sick.  So... could have gone better.  I didn't get any good pictures of him opening presents, because Corwin is just so wiggly.

Anyway, I made him a dragon cake:

Which he was thoroughly enamored with:

It was chocolate brownie with buttercream and a (failed) marshmallow fondant dragon.  I somehow botched the marshmallow fondant -- it wasn't the right consistency at all.  I tried solving the problem by adding more powdered sugar, but after messing with it for a while, it was obvious that I wasn't going to fix it easily.  So I just went with it.

Corwin is pretty excited by his presents -- he got a model tank and a model boat, some new Lego sets, an R/C truck, a Harry Potter T-shirt, and a Domino Rally set.  We already got out his model tank, and he's already had a miniature war with it, his army men, and his model fighter plane.  One of the Lego sets is a Batman one, and Saffron made a mini Gotham City to go along with it.