Happy 9th Birthday Parker!

It was another "quarantine" birthday.  I remember thinking there was no way we'd being doing this in November when we celebrated Esme's birthday in April, but here we are. Jimmy's parents stopped by last week with Parker's present.  He was overjoyed to receive a new toy washing machine.  He played with it non-stop for the first couple days and even set up his own little laundry room in his closet.  We got some battery lights from them a while back and I plan to put one in there so he can see what he's doing.

I've known for a while we weren't going to be able to have a traditional party, so I didn't do my typical planning months in advance.  We normally coordinate with his Halloween costume, but that was not super creative.  It came to me a couple weeks ago that we could do something with fidget spinners since Parker loves them.  I made him a shirt to wear and we put up a sign like we did or Esme.

#allthespinningthings

I made sure to take our middle-of-the-night picture.  He actually stirred a bit, but I just told him to go back to sleep.

This was my first time carving from a sheet cake.  I got a half sheet pan a couple years ago and thought it would work well for this design.  I cut one layer in full and cut two halves from the sides.

Basic chocolate cake with vanilla frosting.  Jimmy keeps bugging me to make yellow cake with chocolate frosting, but that limits design options to brown... Chocolate is Parker's favorite and it's fun to have any color frosting I wneed.

Parker saw me working on it the night before and couldn't' stop talking about it.

Decorations were pretty minimal since I used what was on hand.  A streamer curtain and some spinners made from paper hangin from the light.

We ordered Domino's for supper and Parker thought it was fun to have it dropped off on the front step.

My parent's stopped by and we chatted through an open window.  Parker opened their gift and we all sang "Happy Birthday" together.

We were able to snap a quick socially distanced picture before letting them get back to the car and out of the cold.

We got Parker a playset steering wheel that we installed in his room.  I may need to get a longer lag bolt to better secure it and I added some felt between some of the parts so it isn't as noisy, but still spins freely.

The final birthday surprise was some balloons left anonymously.  I am going to assume it was a neighbor since we had the sign out front, but it could have been anyone.

Happy Birthday buddy, we love you so much!