Happy 6th Birthday to Archie!

We went to Mobile last weekend in order to celebrate Archie's birthday with his cousins and grandparents. It was a bit of a hurry-up trip, because we left for Mobile on Friday and returned on Monday night.

On Saturday morning, we saw Regular E's new land he purchased near Dog River. Here's a photo.

I liked the following one better. It's an aerial view, complete with Reg E's "architectural drawings". As you can see, he paid his architect high dollar for the drawings on his aerial photo. The little sailboat guy is saying, "yarrrr!" and I love the cannon on the castle wall. The stripey part is the Barrow Downs (reference from Lord of the Rings). It says to beware of the barrow wrights. I'm sure that this was wholly contemplated and completed all on personal time. Not work time. Yeah. Right. And no, he's not retarded.

After the new land tour, Phillip and I went out shopping, actually just the two of us for a change. It was pretty nice to spend time together! I almost forgot what that was like!

On Sunday morning, we went to church and then back to my parents' house for party preparations. We brought Archie's 4 year old cousin Lily with us to help. Those two are peas in a pod. Lily was helping Mom and Archie make the fruit salad at one point. While Mom was cutting the pineapple, she told my Mom not to eat the peel part because it would make her sick and she would whine.

Luckily the weather was nice and we were able to do most of of the birthday outside. Archie had a great time with his cousins and his friends. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law brought their jeep, so the kids all climbed it like a jungle gym. There was enough chaos to go around, but fortunately most of it was outside. We had burgers and 'dogs from my Dad the grillmaster and a cake with 'teeny tiny oranges' as requested by Archie. He was so excited about his cake, that he blew out most of the candles before the Birthday Song was over.

We had to go inside to do presents because it was getting dark and chilly. There were A LOT of kids in there! Here's Archie getting something he "always wanted", the Mac Truck from the Cars movie.

It was a very successful birthday! We stopped in for Morgan's orthodontist appointment on Monday morning, then headed back to Cincy.

I had previously told Archie that if he learned his address and phone number that he could get his very own library card when he turned six. He's been super excited for weeks about that. So he wanted a wallet for his birthday for his library card. He got the wallet, so all that was left was to get the card.

We went to the library on Tuesday afternoon and he told the librarians what he wanted. They gave him a form on which he filled out his own name, address and phone number and signed (printed) his name by himself on the back of the card. He was very proud of himself! The card is in the wallet, with multiple check-outs already. I even made him a laminated ID with his picture for the window part where you put your driver's license.

A good birthday experience was had and we thank my Mom and Dad so much for letting us use their house and for the burger and 'dog provisions. Oh yeah...we liked the potato salad too, Regular E. I wanted to mention that before Regular E complains that I forgot he made it or something.