Seven!

Two weeks ago, Quinn celebrated his 7th birthday. I've taken so long to write about it for two reasons -- first, I wasn't here for the actual day and I guess I still feel guilty. Second, I was hoping to include the story of his birth complete with pictures of him. But those pictures are hard to get to on the hard drive in our basement so I decided to do at least a birthday post now, and do the birth story later. We started the celebration of Quinn's birthday in Las Vegas and he got several gifts from Nana & Papa before we left. Here's a picture of him on his new skateboard.When we got home from Vegas, I made him a birthday cake before I left for Denver on the morning of his birthday. He requested a pirate ship. I've made it before, for his 5th birthday and it's a fairly simple cake to make. However, I forgot I needed to make 2 cake mixes so when I started to cut the one cake into the shape of the ship and put it together, Quinn and James both agreed that it looked nothing like a pirate ship. We're flexible though -- so I said what does it look like? A race car was the unanimous vote. So a race car we made. I think it came out pretty nice, given that it was improvised.
Quinn liked it, and that's really all that matters. On his birthday, James gave him his present from us, a new 20" Specialized bike. He loves it and has been riding it all around the neighborhood and even on some trails with James.

We typically let the kids choose their favorite restaurant on their birthday, but Quinn chose to wait until I got home. So on Friday night, we went out and he chose Red Robin. His favorite restaurant is usually Village Inn, but he likes burgers too and that's the primary choice at RR. So if you're keeping track, we've now celebrated Quinn's birthday for almost a week (starting with dinner at Rainforest Cafe in LV). To complete the full week, we took the kids along with Quinn's friend Edward bowling. Quinn and Edward have been friends since Quinn's first day at the Montessori School when they were 4 years old, and even though they go to different schools they live close and we get them together about once a month or so. So we went bowling and Edward even brought a gift for Quinn, some new Tinker Toys. That capped his birthday, and we declared Quinn's birthday week officially over.

Quinn also got a few checks in the mail, and we will be taking most of that money to Wells Fargo to open a bank account on Friday. He also used a portion of the money to buy a couple of new Playmobil toys, a boat and dinosaur play set. And with the influx of new toys, we bagged up a good amount of old toys to give to charity.

I cannot believe Quinn is 7 years old now, it feels like he was just born. The years go so fast!