Connor turned 7 in January 2010 in grand Egyptian style!You may remember that last year was the year of Egypt and hieroglyphics studies for Connor and he even has his own Egypt room now – check out THIS coolness by clicking here. Okay, moving on, we celebrated with a fabulous pyramid cake, Egyptian masks, statues, jewelry, etc!!
Now we have the arrival of the grandest birthday present – lllaaaaaahhhhhh! - a Nintendo DS – Connor’s dream come true at last!! Egypt was quickly forgotten (although all the kids wore the jewelry pretty much all day, and Shelby still does!).
Here’s Connor showing the prized DS to Shelby and Noah.
And here’s the inevitable (you saw it coming, right?) screaming when Shelby and Noah discover that the DS is NOT for them.
But later all was quiet on the Ritchie front as the three kiddos were happily engrossed in their games – Connor on his DS and Shelby and Noah FINALLY content with playing on their old, nerdy and soooo uncool Leapster game units.
But hey, the good thing about the DS was that the kids were so engrossed in it that we did NOT have to go to Chuck E Cheeses later! Yessssss! Our evil plan worked!
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Moving on to Shelby’s 2nd birthday a week after Connor’s – it was all about Dora! Dora cups, Dora plates, Dora cake, Dora presents. Shelby is a cake-eating machine and outdoes her brothers (and previous cake-eating machine champion Grandpa) with ease. Here she is pointing at the cake.
Here she is pointing at her plate. Cake. Plate. Cake plate. CAKE ON PLATE, people!!!!!!
In addition to cake, Shelby REALLY likes those music-playing and talking cards. She was *very* irritated that the card from Grandma and Grandpa did NOT serenade or talk to her:
And here she is, Shelby now (well, then, but you know what I mean) AND I’m certain this is also a glimpse into her in 10 years. Here she is strutting her cute little stuff in her birthday pink tutu and her new birthday pink Vera Bradley purse, complete with pink phone, lipstick, credit card, etc – everything a girl could need! Yes, I *may* have gone a bit overboard.
This is one of my all-time favorite photos of Shelby with her purse, tutu, jewelry galore and talking on her phone, and yet I wonder, what am I creating??
As a matter of fact, just this morning Shelby "called" me on her pink Disney phone and said, "Hi Mommy! I'm a princess! Goodbye!" click. And speaking of what am I creating????, here’s Meatball dressed up for the occasion. It was all very undignified and embarrassing and I’m pretty sure he then hid upstairs for the next 3 days.
And finally, if I were writing the caption to this photo it would be: “Yeah yeah, you have to be nice to me, but it’s not like I got a DS or something cool like that.”
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I’m afraid that Noah’s fifth birthday wasn’t well documented. Mommy fail! Especially after his fourth birthday escapades were so memorable (click here to get some of THAT fun). But maybe after that traumatic birthday Noah needed a low-key birthday. So, this is all I’ve got for ya, folks.
Spiderman was our theme of the day. And YES, that’s Dora wrapping paper you spy on the presents for Noah. What? You didn’t know that Dora and Spiderman hooked up? Mmmm hmmmm, it was all very scandalous.
And once we realized how FABULOUS DSs are for entertaining kids (yes, I said it, everybody knows it and everybody does it so don’t act like you don’t), naturally we got one for Noah’s birthday! Peace was restored to the Universe at last. But only AFTER Connor complained for HOURS about how HE didn’t get his DS until he was 7 and why did Noah get to have one when he was only 5?!??!?
And since Shelby and Connor’s birthdays had fairly decent photographic representation, I feel compelled to put this photo in along with this equally scintillating description – On Noah’s birthday we went to Carousel Mall to ride the carousel. That’s my dad (aka Grandpa) with Noah.
That’s it, Noah’s birthday 2010 folder only had 5 pathetic photos in it – these 3 were the best. Yeah, I know. He was gypped, to be sure (although he DID get a DS two years earlier than Connor). I’ll do better this year.
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As many of you know, Mark had the BIG ONE this year, warranting its own extremely lengthy (but quite entertaining, if I do say so myself) blog entry – refresh and relive the memories by clicking here.
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And then there’s Mommy, last on the totem pole. Last birthday every year. Yup, you mommies out there know what I mean. Look at my birthday table. No Egyptian or Spiderman or Dora themes for me. Not even a birthday cake.
BUT in my family’s defense, I don’t even like cake (but I do LOVE those little mini Wegmans brownies) and the partyware WAS red, my favorite color. And I don’t even care much about Egypt or Spiderman or Dora. Mark evidently couldn’t bring himself to do me a Clive Owen-themed birthday party. Whatevs. At least he didn't put out 42....no wait, I mean.....29...birthday candles.
All was redeemed later when Mark blindfolded me and put us all in the car to venture out on a mystery trip. Well, it was a mystery for about 10 minutes anyway, until Noah piped up, “Hey, this is the way to Zoo Camp!”
I’m not a zoo person. I don’t like animals in captivity. I’d rather they be in their natural environment even if it means I never see them for myself. All the talk of conservation, bla bla bla. And yes yes yes I know most zoo animals are bred in captivity and can’t survive in the wild on their own, but I’ve never been to a zoo that didn’t make me feel horrible for the animals, not even the renowned San Diego zoo. HOWEVER, absolutely nothing is more important to me than teaching my kids the value and gift of animals and the meaning of stewardship. SO, go to the zoo we will until they make their own decisions and opinions about it. *insert Heath Ledger’s Joker face (RIP Heath – LOVED ya in Ten Things I Hate About You) here* Oooooo Estelle why so serious? Okay, enough of that.
Yep, little bigmouth Noah was right, we went to the Zoo, where I was unblindfolded and discovered that I had become an adoptive parent to the sandcats! Well, yay!! I LOVE the little sandcats!! They have a horrible environment, and every little bit of donation helps, I guess. I hope. Here’s Connor and Noah looking at my sandcats. It was a FABULOUS birthday present – ya did good this year, Mark!!! This seems an appropriate time and place to mention that Tahiti would be even better for next year. Just sayin'.
And finally, a new family member was added to our family for my birthday – say hello to FINNEAUS! BEST PRESENT EVER! Well, after getting LASIK eye surgery. And after getting my BMW. But….THIRD BEST PRESENT EVER!
Okay, three funny stories about Finneaus. Noah and I (Noah is my fellow animal-loving little fellow) were in Petco probably buying litter and pet food and whatnot when Noah sped over to the cat cages (organized by Syracuse’s fabulous CNY Cat Coalition). He completely ignored the funny, cute kittens playing and focused only on this sedate orange cat. Now, we already had 3 cats with no intention of getting a 4th, I mean we’re not CRAZY, ya know. Not too much, anyway. After Noah playing and talking about this orange cat for about 20 minutes, I finally had to appease him and told Noah, “Look I’m writing down his phone number, okay? Maybe we can call about him later.” And Noah then INSISTED that we leave the cat HIS phone number, too – TOO CUTE!!!Anyway, I couldn’t get that cute little orange cat out of my mind (and neither could Noah). I told Mark about him and then….SURPRISE! New cat for Mommy’s birthday! YAY!
2nd funny story – I named my birthday cat Finnick (after one of my favorite characters in The Hunger Games book series). HOWEVER, upon finishing the series, it turns out that Finnick …ummmm..err….. doesn’t make it! So anyway, Finnick’s name quickly and quietly was changed to Finneaus. Cool enough, right?
3rd funny story – less than a month ago (meaning 5 months now that we’ve had Finneaus) I was reviewing my cat adoption paperwork and discovered that Finneaus is a GIRL!!!! Now SHE is a lovely (and strangely-named) Finny and I ADORE her. (seen here with Indiana – unseen are my two other little cat-loves Meatball and Pequop)
And, somewhat tragically and surely frustratingly, Connor has figured out my true age. For years I was able to tell him I was 29 and he believed me. Well, one year anyway. And when 29 didn’t change to a different number the next year, my then-too-smart-little-three-year-genius-son figured out something was amiss. And sometimes I keep funny Facebook conversations to put in my scrapbooks (which actually don’t exist yet, therefore I blog), such as this one on my birthday last year with my friend Betsy:
But at least all THIS year Connor was convinced that I was actually one year younger than I actually am. I’ll take it!
Alrighty then, it's time for me to quit blabbering now and I'm certain you are thinking to yourself "Did I really just spend 20 minutes reading about Estelle's new cat?!?!??" I need to go prepare for Connor’s eighth birthday which is TOMORROW!!!Told ya I squeaked this entry in!
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