Seven

I don't remember being 7 that well. Perhaps because 8 is my favorite number, I have always looked back fondly at the year I was 8. But 7 was probably good, too. I hope JT remembers this year fondly. He had a sticky-note list of requests for his birthday presents, including a Star Wars monopoly game (after the drama at Christmas where he told me Mono-poly was boring and he hoped he wasn't getting it for Christmas), hex bugs, a camera "like mom and dad's," a Nintendo DS, Star Wars 'how-to something' book, oil pastels, and nerf sets. After leafing through my chocolate recipe book, he had about 40 selections. I talked him into a peanut butter chocolate cake.

He took a bite and declared, "This should go down in cooking history!" Then he ate a few more bites and said he was done. It just wasn't his favorite. Too rich? I am not sure. It was a modification of this recipe. Of course, I couldn't make it with just plain flour, some of it was whole wheat. And I didn't have cake flour, so I sifted mine and added some cornstarch. And then I got to the sugar section of the recipe: 2 1/2 cups. Crazy, right? So I added only used about half. And the cup of oil? No way. I used about 1/2 and upped the sour cream. I thought the cake was excellent. If you like your cakes very sweet, use all the sugar, but if you are European, I think half is fine. JT doesn't like cream cheese, so I omitted that and made a peanut butter beuttercream frosting. I sort of used a recipe, but it called for 5 cups or more of powdered sugar, and I used less. The chocolate peanut butter glaze was delicious. I think the whole thing could have used a light sprinkle of sea salt to give just the right sweet, salty, peanut buttery combination. And an 8 inch pan or two would be nice. I only have 9 inch pans and had no luck at the usual stores finding a smaller pan. So we had 2 layers instead of 3.

I somewhat ignored the list and convinced JT that he needed the Mind Flex Duel game for his birthday, especially since I found one on clearance after Christmas. It uses a simplified version of an EEG - so you 'think' harder and make the ball levitate on a stream of air (your brainwaves control the fan underneath) and move around.

A few days later we had some friends over for brunch. Here the moms are trying it out. Definitely a good party game!
The weekend after that JT had a small party. He wasn't sure if he wanted a theme. First he suggested a Lego City theme relating to police chasing burglars. I tried to convince him to have a math or science theme. We ended up with no theme, but we did have one activity - making an egg contraption!
The boys worked in groups to come up with 2 contraptions. One egg survived. The other didn't, but that was because the contraption was thrown down with massive force. All the kids got a prize.

This cake was an ice cream cake from Coldstone: chocolate cake with mint chocolate chip and chocolate ice cream layers. Mr. Burli served the slices for the boys and the cake, which should have served 16, served about 8. Luckily I had made lemon blueberry cupcakes with blueberry frosting. The adults enjoyed those.

I also made homemade pizzas - so most of the party I was in the kitchen rolling dough and pulling pans out of the oven. The adults enjoyed Gorgonzola with figs and caramelized onions and also mushrooms and onions and smoked mozzarella, while the boys mostly stuck to cheese pizza. It had rained the day before and the morning before the guests came, so by the afternoon, the kitchen floor was coated in a layer of mud, flour and shredded cheese, but it really was nice to have friends over.

And of course there was some tree swinging.

And rock-jumping.

Seeing them enjoy the yard makes the hard work worth it! I really think seven will be a good year JT. He loves to read, has joined the chess club, is considering piano lessons (although he said he really wants to play the bass guitar) and is generally a really interesting kid to hang around with - I may be slightly biased, of course.