Happy Birthday, Dear Elijah

On Sunday, April 25, we celebrated Elijah’s actual birthday.  Elijah is our child who loves a party and loves when a big pile of gifts are all for him!  He woke up that morning, and the first words out of his mouth were, “I want to open my presents!”

As my brother Zech and sister-in-law Alyse were coming for a visit that day, we talked him into waiting until after church when they arrived, to which he—reluctantly--agreed.  However, Charlotte asked if he could open her gift before church, which we OK’d.

 

On birthdays around here, everyone gets to pick one restaurant and one home-cooked meal.  Elijah, who is a pizza fiend, requested Papa John’s for lunch.  Trying to be efficient and get home as quickly as possible, Jeff ordered from the Papa John’s closest to church from his iPhone at the end of services, and we headed over to pick it up.

We got to the store 15 minutes after it was supposed to have opened, only to find a Papa John’s employee sitting in his car out front.  No lights were on inside.  After a few minutes, another employee with a key drove up, and the two entered the store.  Jeff went in after them, only to find out that the power had been off all morning and that the order had not gone through.

Grrrr.  Jeff placed a second order, the guy told him that he would cancel out the first one, and we headed over to Petco to kill some time while they fixed our pizzas.  (Charlotte wanted a brush for her guinea pigs.  Spotty sheds.  A lot.)

Finally, we picked up the pizzas and headed to the house, where Zech and Alyse were waiting for us.  They had come over to meet Jeremy and to celebrate Elijah’s birthday with us.  For those of you who don’t know, they are expecting their first baby in mid-July, which will finally give our kids their first cousin!  Everyone is very excited.

 

 

After our pizza feast, Elijah finally opened his presents!  He felt that he had waited FOREVER!  We had a Bionicles overload by the time he finished, with a couple of Wii games thrown in for good measure.

  

Then, we talked him into his cake, which he had picked out from the local grocery store earlier in the week.  For some reason, cake just didn’t hold as much fascination as those colorfully wrapped gifts!

 

Eight years old.  I can hardly believe it.