A Seventh Birthday

James had a great day on his birthday.

We decided to stick to routines and still have school, but snuck in a few treats and surprises along the way. Some mornings the 'men' in our family go for an early walk and stop by the neighbor's beignet shop on the way home to breakfast. Now, for those of you not living in New Orleans or elsewhere in la francophonie, beignet [ben-yay] are deep-fried chewy donut holes. The bagel-bites of donut holes?
You can imagine why that makes for a popular kid snack around town! So James got to skype with Grandma and Grandpa, and get fresh hot beignets for breakfast!

Anna will now model for you how we like to eat them best: Rolled in powdered sugar!
(James had already finished his when the camera was found. This is the coarse organic sugar from town here put through our wheat flour grinder once. It turned out halfway between 'American' granulated sugar and real powdered sugar. Close enough for me!)

YUM!

Here's the birthday boy eating his breakfast of champions... granola and yogurt... goofing off because the camera has appeared...

It's not like there are store-bought cupcakes to bring to your class snack time in rural African homeschool. So we made monster peanut butter cookies with pieces of chocolate bars inside. These were still warm for snacktime too... (I think Hoppy is jealous...)

Like my impromtu 'Burger King' crown? James did. Guess that's what matters!

In the afternoon once a week he has an 'extra-curricular' class with a friend. For his birthday they played all sorts of games that were new to James like:

...pin the tail on the donkey! And:

...a scavenger hunt in the yard!

One box of presents from 'home' didn't arrive due to airplane troubles, so in a heroic effort to compensate, Kent and I each wrote James a 'chapter book' with original titles like
The Story of James detailing his first six years of adventures (the photos seem to be the best part), and The Pasmus*** family in the humorous fiction category.
Here he holds one book with one of the better camera smiles:

How have SEVEN years gone by? Where did this guy go?

My 7-yr-old little man loves Star Wars, LOVES loves Star Wars. After years of Thomas the Tank Engine cakes, we have entered a new galaxy. Last year I bought an X-wing and stuck it on top of his cake with star-shaped candles. Perfect. Well, there is no store in town with Star Wars toys and I have a decent secret stash to pull from, but when I asked what he wanted for cake (thinking chocolate or white cake...) he answered, "I want that one scene from Episode 6 where C3PO and R2D2 are walking in the desert just before they come to the big door." Whoa. Wait a minute. Why did I ask? We couldn't find their actual action figures, so I ended up printing C3PO from online and freehand drawing his buddy (held up by Candyland figurines!). So here's the sandy desert scene I could muster (hint: cinnamon sugar makes the right Star Wars sand color):

At his party: "James, your cake looks like a moonscape!"

"But it's not the moon, it's Tatooine, Luke's planet."

He's a hardcore fan. I doubt I will ever get the Candyland pieces back...

Happy Birthday to James!!!

In our family the birthday girl/boy gets to choose the dinner menu, and James chose macaroni and cheese with steamed carrots. So our friend went to buy carrots for me at the local farmer's market and came back with this:

It looks more like a weapon than a vegetable!
James and I had to laugh when I tried to fit it in the fridge! My friend said that she'd never seen anything like it, but that several farmers were selling them from different farms.
Was there something different about the rain last month?

Let's just say we had plenty of leftover steamed carrot. Singular.

In the evening his new best friend Amooti and family came by for cake and presents.

Seven years.

A beautiful mind. A kind heart.

And many more years to use them to his Maker's glory.

We love you James!