Birthday Boy!

It's been a crazy sort of long drawn out Birthday for Scout this year...

...first of all - Scout has been saving all of his money for almost a year now to buy a 55 gallon aquarium - I didn't want one - but he persevered and has been diligently saving and talking of nothing else for months - he had saved about half the amount of money by himself - and then our sweet family came through with birthday money and Petco gift cards to help him out THANKS SO MUCH EVERYONE!!! - so when we were in Fargo for the Black Belt Test - our hotel was immediately in front of the Petco - and we had the truck - so we went ahead and let him spend all of his birthday money and get the full setup including a nice waterproof black base/stand - it sort of has the same finish as our truck bed liner (only a little finer)...

We always put Scout's presents on his bed - so that he wakes up on his birthday morning and opens his presents - this year the Man moved everything into the room - we weren't quite up to the challenge of filling it with water and certainly not of moving all the precious fish/pets - we really need the expert for that - but Scout was so pleased and surprised...

The Man is also responsible for the Birthday cake this year - it's some sort of yellow cake with chocolate pudding icing - Scout loved it - and it made a nice Birthday breakfast...

He also loves lighting his own candles...

...and blowing them out - I remember when he was little - just three or four years old - we lit the candles and blew them out so many times - they were just nubs and we were worried that the smoke detector would go off...

Then we opened a couple more presents - a new underwater camera - I'm sure you'll be seeing closeups of the new tank from the inside out soon...

...and a Black Belt T-shirt from the do-jang in Fargo...

...and with the crazy weeks we've got ahead of us - VBS - and camping/canoeing - it'll still be a little while before we can have a party with his friends...