Little Groupies

Saturday, April 29 was one of the more unusual birthdays I've had. Because John is going to be missing Eric's 10th birthday on Tuesday, we decided dad would take son out for a special day of birthday fun rather than us all spending the day together. They started with going out to breakfast, followed by a few hours of fishing, finalized with fighting a real-live brush fire together with the fire department. In between all the activity, he and Eric put some finishing touches on the famous castle that is due on Tuesday. In an attempt to make the castle 'authentic', the boys decided to spray-paint the sugar cubes a light gray to make them look more like concrete. My assessment is that it would have been better to leave them white, since Neuschwanstein looks like a white castle to me--but I am all for letting the people who do the work make the decisions, so 'mum' is the word.

Meanwhile Little Chic and I went to a Narnia musical based on the story The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe put on by our local Christian radio network. The show was 1-1/2 hours drive, so we invited some friends to go along and had a great time. It was quite the thrill for Caroline to see some kids around her age put on a great production. She had originally wanted to audition for the show, but being the stage mom that I am NOT, the drive was a bit unreasonable for our family. She was happy with seeing the show from the audience and afterward, she was really excited to be able to meet the cast, get a few autographs and have some pics snapped with her two favorite characters, the White Witch and Aslan. The only issue I had with the production is that Aslan looked eerily similar to the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz.

After we returned home in the evening, we let Eric open a couple of presents from John, I opened my gifts from John and the kids and finished the night off with an ice cream cake for me.
It gets a little crazy trying to pack a week's worth of activity into a day, but we all had a lot of fun and we'll celebrate properly when John gets home.