He's a Major, Not a Minor

My firstborn in the wilderness turned 18 today.  WHAT?????  As he joked last week, with this birthday he graduates from being a minor and will now be a major.  Hahaha.  I'm going to miss his sense of humor when he leaves in the fall.

He hasn't left us yet, though, so I'm gonna focus on the present!  After working from 8-4 today, he came home and relaxed for a bit, then after eating his requested birthday meal of pulled pork sandwiches (which I gladly picked up from the requested restaurant, thus saving me the trouble of cooking), we ended the evening with cake and singing, and -- embarrassingly -- that's kind of all we did for his big day.  Womp womp.  I've been asking him for weeks what he wanted to do for his birthday or what present he wanted or even just for any kind of expectations at all concerning his birthday, and he's given me nada.  Not a thing.  So really, the lack of celebration is all on him.  Hahaha.  J/K, j/k.  Kind of.  Haha.  He is genuinely pretty low maintenance these days and doesn't really need anything or want anything in particular, so I guess this year's birthday present is going to be super lame once again and consist of cash money to go towards his mission fund.  

Unfortunately, this "cake" was a comedy of errors from start to finish.  (He -- and all of us -- are sick of real cake, so he agreed to a cookie cake instead.)  Problem #1 was that I had already started making the batter before I realized we were all out of vanilla extract and had to send Grace to the store to pick some up and she had no idea where to find it.  (Sophie had inconveniently used the last of it a couple of nights ago when she made a batch of cocoa chaos frosting.)  Problem #2 was that Ethan didn't even recognize what this cake design was supposed to be!  (It's a doge coin logo.  Apparently the kids all said I should have put a dog on it and then they would have recognized it.)

Problem #3 was that I told Alexa to set a timer once it was in the oven only to find out I don't know how many minutes later that the kids had taken Alexa out to the backyard this afternoon to blast some High School Musical tunes while they were jumping on the trampoline with the water hose and therefore a timer had never been set.  

Problem #4 was that the candles wouldn't stay up straight and we came to find out that the cake was still hot enough that the wax had melted where we had stuck the candles in.  So that was unappetizing.  And our final problem was that we had major issues lighting the candles -- to the point that we just gave up with only a few left because all the rest were kind of just drooping and melting and we needed to get on with the show.  

While this feels like a pretty lame post (and 18th birthday, if we're being honest) I'm hoping Ethan will find it sufficient enough.  Hahaha.  And since he's the one who has been hounding for days now to update the blog AND it's his special day, I'm going to finish out this post with a walk down memory lane -- from his storied origins in the wilderness (ie Oregon) all the way up until the present...

2003

2004

I had jokingly titled his 1 year old picture as "Best Hair" a few years ago on the blog, and I thought it was apropos to include the caption here since he's still rocking that best hair, evidenced by a comment from a Walgreens customer a few weeks ago who told him (and I quote) -- "You have AMAZING hair."  Hahaha.

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

And there you have it --18 trips around the sun for son number 1!  Happy Birthday to Ethan!!!