Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Connor's Birthday!

Well, yesterday was Connor's 10th birthday. He was way excited to finally turn a DOUBLE DIGIT. Yes, it's so important that DOUBLE DIGITS will appear in caps for the remainder of this blog.

He is such a cute kid. Literelly, he is cute - but his personality is so wonderful, too. I can't say that I know any other 10 year old boys, but I think he must be the greatest of them all. Of course, any Auntie bias is excluded from that statement. :-)

We all went over to mom's house for the celebration dinner...we were late. :-( To punish us for being late, everyone was standing out on the driveway, hands on hips, looking quite impatient. Nick backed out of the driveway and pretended to leave. :-) Dinner was spaghetti with salad, green beans and french bread. FINALLY it was present time. Connor got a boatload of cash - he'd been saving up to get a PSP. He got more than enough money to buy it AND get some games. He also got a big stack of really cool baseball cards from Nana and Grandpa. GG isn't able to get out and about much any more, so he received money from her as well. Nick & I got him a used X-Box - SO COOL! It was funny, because we also got him some games and made him open those first. He looked at us and said "but I don't have an XBox" so we said "oh man. I guess we'll have to take them back. Oh well, we kept the receipt." Then he opened the next box and was way excited.

The whole time we thought about getting him the games, when we went to get the games, wrapping it up and watching him open it up, I kept remembering one particular Christmas. It was one of the Christmas's we celebrated in Germany and we were all pretty excited because Jamie was coming back from the States to celebrate with us. He brought a Nintendo for me that I had no idea to expect. I remember just being so excited and in total awe of my big brother for this really cool gift that he gave me. It's still one of my more favorite Christmas memories.

After dinner & dessert (which I was afraid I'd light on fire - we got some party popper things that shot out plastic confetti which a piece of landed on his lit cake...yikes) we were treated to several performances by Hannah. She is so sweet - she makes up these songs and then comes to perform them to us with a dance. She is way braver than I am. She just might be a superstar one day.

All in all, it was a good day. I'm glad we moved here so that we can get join in on these family things. Nights like last night totally make the move here worth it. Even though I do miss "my" mountain. :-)




Fun Facts about March 11th:

1791: Samuel Mulliken was the first person to receive more than one patent from the US Patent Office
1847: John Chapman "Johnny Appleseed" died in Allen County, Indiana - this day has become known as Johnny Appleseed Day
1867: The volcano Great Mauna Loa erupted in Hawaii
1909: The first gold medal to a perfect-score bowler was awarded to on AC Jellison by the American Bowling Congress (yes! strike!!)
1930: Babe Ruth signed a two-year contract with the New York Yankees for $80,000
1969: Levi Strauss started stelling bell-bottomed jeans
1986: Popsicle announced its plan to end the traitional twin-stick frozen treat, for a more streamlined one-stick model
1993: Janet Reno was unanimously confirmed by the US Senate to become the first femail attorney general
1997: Paul McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II
1998: Connor was born!

Famous People Also Born March 11th:
Sam Donaldson (1934)
Lisa Loeb (1968)
Terrence Howard (1969)
Johnny Knoxville (1971)
Benji & Joel Madden (Good Charlotte) (1979)
Thora Birch (1982)