The Taylor Times: Happy Birthday Mark!

I have been hard pressed to find a picture of Mark where he isn't giving me a silly face. This is a rare shot of him being 'normal'!

Today Mark turns 12 years old. Since he has been alive for a dozen years, I decided to give him one dozen birthday presents. The big ticket item was a bike. (The other gifts were Frosted Flakes, mechanical pencils, water guns, 12 $1 bills, a mini soccer ball, a water ball, corn puffs, Pringles, rootbeer popsicles, water bottles and some Funyons.) His bike is as big as my bike, which shocked me at first, until I realized that since Mark is as tall as me (I still have 1/2 inch on him!) that he would need a bigger bike. It makes since, but I am having a difficult time watching him grow up so fast. Paul got Mark's old bike since his bike is having issues with the chain falling off all of the time and the boys were able to ride their bikes to school today. Mark was bummed that he had to go back to school from being off-track on his birthday, but riding a new bike to school helped ease the pain (and so will a dinner from Cafe Rio!). Since I (still) can't drive yet and the street in front of the school is under construction, Daniel isn't too excited about driving in the chaos, so riding bikes is the best solution for all of us!

Last Saturday we had a birthday party for Mark. Ethan thought that the party was last week, so he was relieved to come on the day of the actual party! (When his mom dropped him off last week, I didn't realize that he had a gift with him. When he asked me where to put the gift, I told him that the party wasn't until the next Saturday. He stood there and said "Awkward- this is really awkward!" Poor kid!)

We ordered a 26 inch pizza- it was huge! The pizza place didn't slice it into wedges like I requested, but the kids had a fun time eating the weird little squares (which is how they normally cut the large pizzas) They made a pretty good dent in the pizza. I think that in a few years I will need to order two of these to keep everyone happy.

Jane, Mitchel, Ryan, Mark, Mikey, Seth, Paul, Ethan

Ryan, Mark and Mikey

The boys played ball games outside while we waited for the pizza to arrive.

My cute little birthday boy

After dinner, the boys played Q-tip war. They each had a hand ful of Q-tips (from the dollar store) and a straw. They would load the Q-tip into the straw and blow it out. We moved furniture around so they had 'bunkers'. I'd say that this was a successful game because they played it for nearly one hour!