The phrase Joseph uses the most lately is "Just kidding", and he'll laugh like it's a great joke anytime he says it.
It wasn't until after I piped the phrase that I realized it looked like we were playing a mean joke on him. "Happy Birthday, except we're just kidding. It's not really your birthday. Tough luck, kid." He loved it though.
His passion this year has been digging in the dirt, so we made a dirt-themed cake for him. (By the way, did you know it's pretty much impossible to pipe frosting onto a crumb cake? You probably did. I didn't, which is why the letters look kind of creepy and wobbly....there was no way on earth that frosting was going to stick to the cookie crumbs covering the cake. Live and learn...)
We added gummy worms all over the cake and made a worm border around the base.
This morning he loved running though the streamers we hung from his bedroom door...except at first he tried to keep them nice and perfect by carefully crawling under them. It took a bit of convincing to get him to run through them.
The birthday child gets to pick the meals all day, and this funny boy really adores oatmeal. Matthew kept trying to convince Joseph that he'd really prefer fruit crepes compared to oatmeal.....but Joseph knew well enough what he wanted. So, oatmeal it was. The bigger kids weren't so enthusiastic about breakfast (we have oatmeal almost every day, so it's not special to them), but they ate it anyway.
The big kids all worked so hard making birthday presents for Joseph. In particular, Matthew and Sarah worked for days creating a giant castle playground out of some large boxes. Darn it all, I didn't get a picture of it, but their attention to detail was interesting. Matthew cut out construction paper bricks and built an entire fireplace and chimney inside the castle. He even cut out a brown roast chicken and made a turning spit for it, then carefully made layers of flames in yellow, orange, and red paper. It looked so great, and he worked on it for days. Another creative feature was a large framed portrait of a person, titled "Our Noble King". The face was cut out so Joseph could stick his face in the hole and be the King. On the outside portion of the castle wall this cut-out hole was framed with a poster saying "Wanted. Huge Reward", so Joseph could be the bad guy if he wanted to switch characters. So fun.
They hid the huge box in my bedroom while they worked on it, then dragged it out into the family room on the Big Day so Joseph could play with it. He was SO delighted and they all played for hours.
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