8

Gift from dad - he's all set up in his room to jam, and he's already got his first chords down to go along with his first blister! 

Caleb is 8, and there is much to celebrate about this wonderful boy who fills our life with joy and new discoveries each day! We invited 15 kids to our place for a bday party this weekend. We hosted an epic paper airplane making competition with awards for best decorated, best design, best distance flyer, best trick flyer and best overall flyer! The kids worked for a long time on their planes, then we set up some bristol board targets for the kids to take turns aiming at. This turned out to be a great way to keep everyone engaged and our house relatively intact during the party! We then surprised Cale with an amazing Harry Potter cake made by a friend of mine. He was very impressed, and the cake was delicious!

Our Fiesta sombrero is now a staple for all of our family parties!

Cake goals!

My friend even added a few owl cupcakes to the order!

Airplane target practice

Caleb's actual bday was on Monday, so as has become our annual tradition, we all take the day off to spend a family fun day together. We were hoping to go skiing at Martock, but I've been down and out with a flu for the past 12 days, so I really didn't have the energy to hit the slopes for the first time in 20+ years! We ended up playing board games, figuring out the cool microscope Grammie and Grampie gave Caleb as a present, and cuddling/snacking/relaxing all day. I love how our family has 3 winter birthdays to give us a reason to celebrate and to help break up the long,cold season.

Caleb is truly a wonderul kid. He is kind, smart, funny, introspective, caring, artistic, innovative and still wonderfully loving and cuddly. Here's one little story to show what a great little person he is becoming - I was recently telling Caleb about a new committee forming that will be working to bring a new refugee family to Annapolis Royal. He was so excited and was asking all about it, but then his faced dropped when he realized that I would be joining the committee, not him! I checked in with the committee organizers and asked if they would be ok with having a jr member, and they enthusiastically said yes! So now Caleb and I are on our first committee together and I can't wait to get started working with him!!

After years of preferring to play mostly on his own, he now has many good friends and is becoming more social all the time. His number one fan is his little brother. Odin thinks Caleb is hilarious, not to mention Big and Strong!! Each day after I pick the boys up, I ask how their day was a school Odin, without fail, will tell me that he got to sit beside Caleb at snack time! That is seriously his highlight every single day! Caleb is such a great big brother and I'm so thankful that he is kind and patient with his very strong-willed little bro.

Caleb was too busy playing guitar with his dad in his room to do an interview this year, but he did answer a couple of quick questions for me:

What would you do if you had 1 million dollars? Donate it to save animals and save some for food and other stuff!

What do you like about living in Annapolis Royal? All the people are so friendly!

Where is your favourite place in the world? Mexico

What do you want to be when you grow up? Pop star (still holding on to this dream!)

What's your favourite color? Any neon colour - bright pink, orange, yellow, green, blue!