Jack is ELEVEN - oh my heaven!

I got scolded by my sister tonight, I am a bad blogger. Never mind that it took her 5 years to get on the blogging bandwagon.... :) Anyway, here's a blog!

Jack is now 11. I am not near old enough to have an eleven-year-old son. It's just not possible. That means I am a mere two years away from having a TEEN in the house....inconceivable! But yet here I am, and I have plenty of gray hairs to prove it. Jack's birthday was on Friday, we had to rush out of the house a little early in order to hit the grocery store for some cupcakes. I don't remember bringing treats to school on my birthday, but if I did....thanks, Mom, what a chore! I could have been smart and frugal and baked them myself the night before, but I didn't. So instead, I spent $15.67 on 30 cupcakes that had too much frosting, and which Jack probably didn't even like. But, whatever, we bring the cupcakes to his classroom in the morning, his teacher thanks me....and later that day when I happen to see Jack in the lunchroom and embarrass him by singing "Happy Birthday" in front of the whole 5th grade, I see these same cupcakes under his lunch table. His teacher has instructed him to hand them out to the kids at lunchtime. I'm thinking perhaps we have exceeded the age where it's acceptable to bring treats to school. Who knew?

That evening, our tradition is a family birthday dinner at a restaurant of the birthday boy's choice. I just love it that my kids love the same restaurants that I do. I also love the fact that as The Mom, I get to make the rules and say fast food is not an option for The Birthday Dinner. So we headed out to Olive Garden to meet Grandma & Grandpa & Auntie Anna & also Jack's godmother Karen and her family. A party of 13 all together. At many Olive Gardens that I have been to (and there have been many), they have call-ahead seating, where you can call and put your name on the list before you leave home. I guess that's just not the case here, when I called to ask about it, they suggested that I send somebody from my party to put our name on the list a half-hour ahead of the rest. Hmmm. I guess that was going to be me. But running a little late as one does when she has 4 children, we showed up at just about the same time as Grandma & Grandpa. No worries though, it was a beautiful night, and we waited outside while the kids did fun things like climb on the light poles and give Grandpa another reason to want to start drinking. When we finally were seated, I think we were at the world's smallest table that was supposed to seat 13 people...but it all worked out nicely. Jack enjoyed his meal, and especially enjoyed all the gifts he got from Grandma & Karen. They staff of waiters sang "Happy Birthday" and he got to blow out a candle and eat some chocolate cake. At one point he came over to my chair, hugged my neck and told me that I was the BEST MOM EVER! I just had to make sure to document that, because as you can see by what comes next...that feeling is mighty short-lived. Before we left, poor Carmella had gone to the bathroom and ended up puking...we are thinking maybe a little TOO much fettuccine alfredo...if that weren't bad enough, while she was in the bathroom, we decided it was time to leave and we all got up from the table and were waiting outside...oops. Darn it, I had always been soooo good about counting 4 heads when we were out in public. How much ya wanna bet this is brought up in a therapy session in another 20 years??? Ah well.

So, there's your post, oh sister of mine! And look, I even found a picture to include, too! Though that whole Olive Garden meal was not captured on anything other than my camera phone....which doesn't seem to want to send OR receive picture messages since we moved to IL...I did snap a couple pictures of Jack opening up some gifts on Sunday afternoon. Call the Verizon people? Yes, yes, it's on The List.