Those Crazy Argonauts: And now he is 12

28 May 2016

And now he is 12

On the one hand I am so proud of this kid. On the other I am so impressed that we've all made it this far. Which is probably not the best thing to say right before he hits the teenage years, but there it is. Our only extrovert (so far), he is great at jumping into new situations and making friends. His head contains massive amounts of information (even stuff not related to Pokemon) and he loves to read. He is a great big brother and Isaac absolutely adores him. He is a leader to his brothers and includes them in all his interests and playing with his friends.

And his latest and greatest interest is Doctor Who. That will come up again in this blog post.

The anticipation of his birthday almost killed him. And the fact that he had to wait until almost 5pm to open his presents may have been the greatest trial of his life so far. But, in the end, it was worth it.

We started with the least exciting gift: clothes. Josh will be ordained a deacon this Sunday and needed a white shirt and church pants that fit. I also made a chart of his (soon-to-be) priesthood line of authority. Not particularly interesting to him now probably, but hopefully at some point he will appreciate it.

The next gift got a much better reaction: a bow tie! Because bow ties are cool. (If you don't hear Matt Smith's voice in your head when you read it, you aren't reading it right.)

And then the Illustrated Dictionary of Doctor Who. We haven't seen much of his face since he laid eyes on this book.

Also, because Jason is ordaining Josh tomorrow, I thought it would be cool for them to have matching bow ties. Because, as you may have heard, bow ties are cool. (Again, Matt Smith)

Funny story about the book: Josh told me about that book when it was on sale at the middle school book fair a month or so ago. He didn't have any money at the time, so I told him no money, no book. However, a couple of days later, Isaac and I snuck over to his school to buy it as a surprise. We waited until after school had started and drove over. Then, as we walked into the school, we came right up behind Josh at the front desk. At which point, we made a quick, quiet retreat out of the building and hung out behind one of the pillars out front until he was gone. That was a close one!

Aunt Rachel showed up to watch us eat dinner (I promise we offered her some) and dessert (didn't feel so bad about this one - most adults wouldn't find this appealing). She helped us out by keeping Josh's eyes covered while dessert made it out of the freezer.

And this picture I just have to share because Josh looks like he has a very evil plan in mind.

And BLOW!

And EAT!

So, about this dessert. Looked so much better in my head. I should probably leave creative thinking to people who make Pinterest worthy stuff. These were supposed to look like candles. I bought Mega Stuf Oreos (because I was raised right), chocolate frosting (dairy free), and marshmallows. Round one did not turn out great because of the difficulty of smoothing frosting on the marshmallows. Jason recommended heating up the frosting, which worked pretty well. Then I ran into the problem that marshmallows don't stack well if you want them to stay that way for very long. I tried putting little lollipop sticks to hold them...and that helped...kind of. Regardless, some them were tipping at some very precarious angles no matter what I did. So much so that I placed them in the freezer as soon as I could and gave up on the idea of transferring them all to a nice, pretty plate for him to blow out. So, presentation not so hot, but three boys with chocolate, marshmallows and cookies are happy boys. For the win.

I was excited that the older boys liked them, but I figured that it would be a disaster for Isaac to get a hold of them. So, we just gave him an Oreo. He didn't appear to feel left out.