Six! Six! Six!

YaYa was the only sibling home in the morning on Mr. TOF’s birthday.  She had been sent home from Bible Camp because she had gotten momentarily sick on Tuesday, but was already feeling perfectly fine by the time she actually arrived home.  It was really fun to see these two have the bathtub to themselves for breakfast.  Mr. TOF picked donuts, of course!  Since he lucked out and got a wonderful summer birthday, we just got up when we woke up, and I ran down to one of his favorite places, Lakeside Bakery, to get some of our favorite donuts.  (They are so much better than grocery store donuts).

The bookends of our family are a fun combination.  I love to watch them interact.

Normally we open presents right after breakfast.  It’s a wise move, because waiting to open the presents drives everyone crazy.  I decided that Mr. TOF should wait to open presents until the evening when Dr. Peds got home from work and the middles got home from camp.  The anticipation of waiting all day nearly killed him, and I almost went crazy in the process.

The night before his birthday, our neighbor invited Mr. TOF to go to a Duluth Huskies baseball game.  You can’t even imagine this little guy’s excitement.  A REAL baseball game!  In a real baseball park!  Dr. Peds went along, and let me tell you, Mr. TOF thoroughly enjoyed absolutely every second of the experience.  He ate some cotton candy, and didn’t want to miss a second of the action.  (I got a play by play of the best moments when he got home).  Best of all, because it was his birthday, his name was announced over the speaker system and the crowd sang to him.  Super exciting!  Our neighbor gave him this baseball hat, and now the Minnesota Twins are his very favorite team, and the Duluth Huskies are his second favorite team.  Every day he carefully decides which hat to wear.

Mr. TOF picked pizza for lunch, so he and YaYa and I headed down to our favorite pizza restaurant, Vitta Pizza.  I don’t know if I ever remember taking this combination of kids to lunch before.  We had a lot of fun.  Mr. TOF and YaYa both love the Ceasar salad there, so they split a salad to go along with our pizza.  The VERY best part was the soda I allowed the “birthday man” (as he called himself) to order.  We hardly ever order soda, and this guy had so much fun mixing all the flavors in the soda machine together.  He loved it. In the afternoon we made the birthday cake.  Mr. TOF wanted to help bake the cake, and had a very specific idea of how he wanted blue frosting with Swedish fish candies jumping out of the cake.  We used marshmallows to be the “rocks” in the water.  Sadly, his siblings couldn’t quite seem to keep their fingers out of the frosting as the afternoon went on, and they swiped all the frosting off the sides, which caused the cake to crumble a bit by the time we actually got to the candle blowing in the evening.  Oh well.  That’s how things seem to go around here.  The cake still tasted sugary and good.