Our best blonde-haired, Fortnite-loving, Murdoch-watching, dog-walking, book-devouring fella Finn has somehow completed 11 (!) full trips around the sun with us. On Saturday we celebrated with the arrival of a giant Lego wind turbine plus some great gifts (a forensics kit & more!) from Grandma & Grandpa Nack, after which a whole gaggle of young dudes came over for Nerf wars, cake, and a movie. Check out a little gallery plus an epic battle to blow out candles. 😝
Look at these handsome gentlemen; just look at ‘em! 🙂
Here they salute us with “The Gentleman’s Dab.”
And finally they demonstrate some of “the freshest emotes of 2018.” (It’s a video game thing, Mom. :-p)
For many, many months, our budding junk (er, treasure) collector Henry has been obsessively watching YouTube channels that demonstrate the fine art of metal detecting. Accordingly, he’s been badgering us to buy him some crazy-expensive kit like the pros use. Happily we were able to talk him down to a much more reasonable little starter kit, and as we hoped he went SUPER BERSERK upon receiving it as an early birthday present. (Our G-Man is nothing if not reliably expressive. 😝) Here’s a little gallery showing the unveiling plus a first treasure-hunting mission with Finn & Charlie.
The time has come! Our man Henry got his braces off after 15 months. He was a complete orthodontic champ for the entire duration of brace-wearing. He was always on top of wearing the required rubber bands, and he never complained about tooth or mouth pain – kind of miraculous for our little grump! He was pretty nervous about how painful it might be to get them removed, and also anticipating how weird it would feel to not have them on his teeth anymore!
Happily the removal was no big deal, and he is getting used to having more room in his mouth and beautifully-aligned pearly whites. To celebrate the braces’ removal, we gave Henry two more of his dad’s old Lionel train cars – a flatbed and a crane car, so he was immediately off to the basement to add them to his rig!
To commemorate our big man’s tenth (!!) full orbit around the Sun, I compiled a little photo tour of him through the years:
Compare that to how grown up he looked this week reading the qualities of a good Scout at our recent pack meeting:
And just for completely random comparison, here he is cavorting with Grandpa Nack right after Hen was born (“Kinda steep!”):
A decade, man… a decade of this dude, and I’m at a loss for words. It feels like some blow-out retrospective is in order, but rather than wait on that to come together, I can at least share some fun festivities from Finn’s little party.
Despite often telling us that “Being the center of attention is not really my jam,” the Finnster does really enjoy hanging out with a few pals. Therefore on his birthday we rounded up some of the “M Force” (M as in Minecraft, naturally :-)) for some pizza, Nerf battles, and ‘crafting. Here’s a little gallery from the occasion.
The house in Leadville has seen its share of Micronaxx milestones—e.g. Finn turning four and getting a huge Lego truck; Hen turning two (cupcakes!) and three (fireman backpack!). This year the timing of the boys’ school vacation meant that we celebrated Finnster’s tenth (TENTH!!) birthday a bit early. After a fun day of skiing, we brought home some Pizza Hut “cuisine” (Finn’s request 😌) to enjoy with the mint chip ice cream he & Grandpa whipped up. Like me, Finn enjoys savoring the opening of presents, and as you can see in the photo gallery, we had to restrain Hen from blurting out info prematurely. 🤣 In any case, everyone had a ball!
Look at these big, handsome beasts! The Walking Train is underway!
We can’t believe that it’s been eight full rides around the Sun since our young Hen suddenly charged into the world, and we continue to have a blast with him. We’ll try to post more pics from his birthday shortly, but in the meantime here’s a peek at our epic day at Great America:
Our big guy had a blast all day long. In this little gallery you can see him enjoying a cake topped with his Lego doppelgänger; getting The Dangerous Book for Boys from Grandpa Liggett; blasting Mom-O with a “High Eight”; and getting Captain Underpants from Grandma & Grandpa Nack.
Happy birthday to the marvelous Mr. F—cha cha cha! 😀
Up in Tahoe I rang in the start of my 40’s just two days after our friend Hans started his 50’s. Just as last year we shared a cake, and this year Margot & the boys took the sting out of mortality by giving me “Benny’s Spaceship Spaceship SPACESHIP!!” from The Lego Movie—a loving throwback to the 80’s-vintage sets I had growing up. Amazingly (miraculously!) despite our cabin being darker than Carlsbad Caverns, we built the beast and got it home without losing any parts.
Here’s a handful of photos from the festivities—including impatient Henry realizing that yes, he will actually get to eat some cake 🙂 .
Q. Who’s got four thumbs and is (almost) ready for the first day of school?
A. Theeeese guys. 🙂
(For comparison: First day of first grade/kinder 2014; first day of kinder 2013)
Our lad Henry marveling excitedly at the Birthday Lego set he has waited for!
Our Henry has hit another milestone – he is officially a 6-year old! He has been so excited to turn six, and we’ve been stretching the celebration out over the past two weeks. Last week, at Henry’s request, we took a family vacation to Legoland California as a special birthday treat. While there, we also visited San Diego’s Maritime Museum and the USS Midway aircraft carrier, and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. At long last, Henry got to celebrate yesterday with singing and vanilla cupcakes, cards and gifts from cousins, grandparents, and our beloved Coco, and of course a new Lego City construction set from us.
Feliz Cumpleanos to our youngest, but no longer little, Henry!
Summer’s officially here at last, and the Micronaxx are thrilled! Margot & I were able to catch Henry’s kindergarten graduation ceremony on Thursday, enjoying some cupcakes & a mini concert (stay tuned for videos). Meanwhile check out our man celebrating.
Somehow—to our absolute shock—we’ve done seven full laps of the sun since our once-wee man made his debut. (“The days are long but the years are short.”) Happy birthday, our blonde & dimpled treasure!
Stay tuned for more photos & videos from the celebration, but in the meantime check out a gallery of the marvelous Lego-themed cake Mom-O crafted & Finn decorated, on which each member of the fam + Grandma & Grandpa Nack appear. Here, let’s have Finn explain it; just don’t tell him I shared this clip with you. 🙂
[YouTube]
I’m clearly remiss in posting it, but on behalf of our newly minted first-grader & kindergartener, Happy First Day of School! 🙂
Last week our Henry turned 5 years old. Five! We can hardly believe our “little guy” is five already. We celebrated his actual birthday on the 9th, with family gifts and a sushi dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant, where Henry’s friends “the sushi ladies” presented him with the long-anticipated and much-talked-about green tea ice cream with umbrellas in it. He was thrilled!
His favorite part of the day, by far, was opening his new Lego Cargo Train set, his special gift from Mom-o and Dad-o. He’d been talking about it for a long time and was really hoping he’d get it for his birthday. He spent the next couple of days building the engine and cars with some assistance from his equally Lego-crazed brother and father. Now we’ve got the set up and running in the basement, and in Henry’s own words, he’s “obsessed with it”!
Yesterday we had his big birthday party in the backyard. He was really excited about its construction theme – we had caution tape streamers, a dump truck mylar balloon, real orange safety cones, hardhat party hats for the guests, safety signs, a bulldozer piñata, and a box-tower building relay race. Oh – and a bouncy house! There is no kid who enjoys a bouncy house more than Henry Nack. As soon as it was delivered and inflated he was in there hopping around and doing somersaults. All the kids played so hard they were dripping with sweat and red-cheeked by the end of the party. We decided to do a post-party cool-off at the Elks pool, with a little poolside takeout Bibo’s pizza to go with it.
Here’s a gallery from the big party!
This post is a bit belated, but the party wasn’t: Happy Birthday to our big, bright, blonde boy! We had a ball (my totally sore, bouncy-house-strained neck notwithstanding ;-)), and we’ll post photos soon. Meanwhile, let’s sing!
Hear the chaos!
See the uncooperative candles that keep threatening to go out!
Celebrate our big blonde guy turning 6!