Family Birthday Night For Kaiden

He Waited As Patiently As He Could. . . .

SO as I mentioned before Grandma Mary was recovering nicely in the hospital and got the green light to be discharged Tuesday morning and since Dave's ticket was open ended he decided he would catch the red-eye Tuesday overnight so that he could be home Wednesday morning to see the boys. Dave being the very good son that he is (I can only hope one of my boys would be there like this for me in the future) he took his mom to get her prescriptions filled, bought groceries and got her all set up back at her home before heading out that night for the airport. Tuesday night when he was on the phone with the boys he said to Kaiden "Daddy will be there in the morning" - which meant that when Kaiden stirred in his bed around 5:15ish he came running to my bed to climb in and wait it out with me for Dave to come back. Which was fine since I didn't really sleep much that night - something about knowing your husband is flying all night & then driving back home in the morning after almost 24 hours with no (to little) sleep makes me a nervous wreck!! So I had asked Dave to send me texts at each of the different check points, but especially when he was 10 minutes or so away from home so that I could get up and turn off the alarm system - wouldn't want to wake up Pierce & Trooper who were the ONLY ones left sleeping at this point! Ha ha ha.

Better Late Then Never!

So after seeing the boys off to preschool Dave crawled in bed and slept most of the morning away, he deserved it, then we picked up the boys, had lunch and all took naps - this was shaping up to be one of my favorite days in a long time! That night after dinner Kaiden was itching to have his family birthday, he knew there were still a few presents left for him to open, plus he wanted his 'Finn McMissile' birthday cake. Like I've mentioned before, normally, even if it's just for our family birthday party, I am all about letting them pick out their cake & decorating it for them, but with the week we had AND the fact that I am pregnant and pretty constantly running out of steam I decided I'd be a little more 'creative' with my CARS 2 cake!!

Kaiden helped me to make the birthday cupcakes, remember I had devised a plan, I had cupcake liners left over from the previous two years of CARS birthday parties. Also in that party supply box I had little CARS themed candles, a photo frame cake topper, table clothes (which I forgot to put out, and Kaiden noticed) and a few new things I had picked up this year. So after dinner plates were cleared off I sent the boys upstairs behind closed doors so I could construct my cop-out birthday cupcake extravaganza!!

See what I did there!? Yeah, creative genius that I am, haha ~ insert sarcastic grin here ~ SO it's NOT my best work of art, but Kaiden loved it & that's really all I'm going for!!

Luckily our Kroger always has tons of cool stuff on clearance, and as luck would have it this year they had a HUGE CARS 2 display which I kept my eye on for when it hit discount status ~ partially because I get a thrill out of big savings (a mom has to get her kicks when/where she can) but also because I ~~hate~~ ~~abhor~~ loathe all things related to toys - their $$ cost, their existence on my floors, or in my house for that matter, in my car and the garage too, the fact that they inevitably WILL BE broken and did I mention I HATE buying them ~ it's like torture to me ~ which is why I'm a HUGE fan of hand-me-downs, consignment sales and of course the GoodWill!!! SO back to the cupcake thing - at Kroger they had several different kinds of die cast cars of the movies characters and Kaiden had already gotten some from his Grammy and Dave bought him two or three before going out of town, but somehow we had missed the main characters and in an instance of complete serendipity when I went looking the last two kits they had were the EXACT characters he had asked for. See here's the thing each of these 'kits' had three (count them THREE) cars in them and they were originally priced at a ridiculous $17.99 (ugh it gives me heartburn just thinking about paying full price for these things) BUT because they were on clearance I got each pack for $2.75 for a grand total of $5.50 - for 6 cars I can handle that!! SO those would be the cars you see sitting atop the cupcakes and I hit up the other discounted items to get him another new shake n'go car Professor Z to go with Finn, and a ZAK pack of new plates & bowls & silverware to match. Go BIG or Go HOME!!