Larry's Birthday

So for Larry's birthday we knew we'd have to celebrate the weekend before (with his birthday around the 4th of July and mine around Christmas we hardly ever get to celebrate too close to the actual day), so I told him to figure out what he wanted early. I assumed he'd choose Malad because he had wanted to go a couple week before, but he surprised me by picking a day to himself in Wendover. 

After he left for the bus ride, I decided to take the kids out to Golden Corral for breakfast (I thought we'd get a free one, but they said the "coupon" we had only worked with two adults. Blah!). After that I let the kids pick between a hike up North with a bird refuge nature walk, and a walk through the International Peace Gardens OR a nature walk down south that had some water they could play in. Majority vote made the water nature walk win so we headed there after breakfast. 

This Dripping Rock Trail was pretty fun, it had this cool rock wall with painted rocks that were fun to check out. All was good, until Pierce and Lucy both needed my help to get down into the water and had a hard time waiting for me to help the other, so there was lots of crying. Then I made a rookie mistake and didn't have them try and go potty after breakfast, so we were only there for a few minutes when Lucy said she needed to go to the bathroom. I thought I had seen a bathroom at the trail head, so I figured we could walk back, go potty, and head back to the water. Unfortunately, there wasn't a bathroom there and we had to drive to a gas station down the road, which meant we weren't going back to the trail and so it was a VERY short visit. 

After the bathroom break, we headed home to relax for a bit and then I thought it would be fun to go to the Family Park in Lehi (it's a playground and a pretty cool splash pad). I made ANOTHER rookie mistake and totally forgot Pierce's shoes AND it was super sunny and the ground was really hot, which means I had to carry him around because he wanted to play more on the playground than in the splash pad (which means I had to hold onto him a LOT!). Luckily, the kids still had a lot of fun, but, of course, no one wanted to leave. I told them we'll have to plan a whole day there to enjoy the park and splash pad, we'll bring our own snacks and sun cover so we can really enjoy everything it has, again. Overall, it could've been a worse day, but we had a lot of fun.

Larry came back and said he actually won some money, which is new for him! And he really enjoyed being able to read on the bus. So that was a win.

For his actual birthday day, he didn't want to do a breakfast and doesn't like a lot of sugar, and has been saying he doesn't really want gifts anymore, just gift cards or coupons for massages. I made him some for Father's Day, so I decided for his birthday to stick with the "Want, Need, Wear, Read" gifts (mostly because I already found something he'd like for each category). We also did dinner at Leatherby's and the "why we love him" tradition. We did dinner right this time, we had Gwen and Cara share a burger, Lucy ordered chicken strips, and then Larry got what he wanted. Pierce and I just shared their food with them so we all didn't eat too much food, saving more room for ice cream (of course even though we only ordered three meals, all of us getting our own ice cream means it was still close to $100 with tip).

Even though he really wanted the gift cards, he liked the ones I got him (a silly shirt, a book about games with the kids you can play while sitting down, a game from his wish list, and new N64 controllers, since our old ones don't work as well). He had fun in Wendover and enjoyed a low key birthday day with his dinner choice. I just hope he knows how much we love him and all he does with/for us!