Turning eight

And then he was eight. It happened so fast, and I'm so far behind, that I haven't written his letter yet, but it's coming eventually, I promise.

In our family we have a tradition of celebrating birthday weeks. Why? Because a birthday doesn't always fall on a convenient day, or sometimes people just have bad days, or sometimes people are under the weather. Having only one day to celebrate all year long seems hardly fair. So in our house the celebrant gets a whole week of lighter chores, their choice of extra activities, and their choice of meals. It's well earned on the other 51 weeks of the year.

On his actual birthday, our newly minted eight year old chose dinner at Real Seafood Co. so he could have crab legs. The day before found us at the Food Gatherers fund raiser dinner, and the rest of the week consisted of various combinations of tacos (shrimp tacos, chicken tacos, and beef tacos). On the final day of his birthday week he had the whole family over for grilled salmon and salad and games in the yard. We took cookies to homsechool group, cupcakes to nature group, and made strawberry shortcake with family.

Perhaps it is a sign of his maturation that he had only a limited birthday list this year. Prior lists have been longer than the number of party guests, and at times audacious in request. This year's list included one outdoorsman's knife, and three different books. Without wanting to encourage greed, I asked him a couple of times, in subtle ways, if he was sure his list was complete. The upside, of course, is that he got eveything he asked for, plus some great art supplies and a totally awesome wizard's hat to go with his cloak, and was completely and utterly pleased.

And then the birthday, and the birthweek, were past, and what we had left was an eight year old. An eight-year-old in a wizard's costume with an outdoorsman's knife.