Jack and Anna are 11!

We try to make all our kids feel super, extra special on their birthday. That is a little harder with Jack and Anna, since they share a day. So, we have to spread it out a bit. I'm sure this has been mentioned, but our kids choose between a gift, a party, or a special outing. They only get one! Jack and Anna generally pick the outing. This year, Anna wanted Great Wolf Lodge and Jack wanted to bike ride at Valley Forge. Anna's trip to GWL was supposed to be on Fair Day, but was postponed to November. Valley Forge will be this weekend. (Note, I wrote this back on October 4th, now it is October 20th.)

In the meantime, we had Anna's cake on Saturday, Sept 29th. She wanted a mermaid theme and asked if I could incorporate candy. It didn't come out quite like I'd hoped, but she loved it, so I was happy. It did taste good. To get it the right height, I actually made 3 different cakes--red velvet, vanilla, and lemon. And, for future reference, the graham cracker added a little crunch that everyone really liked. We may be crumbling graham crackers on all our cakes! For her meal, she wanted Golden Corral. It is not mine or Thomas' favorite restaurant, but the kids really like it and on their birthday, they get what they want. We did that on their actual day (Wednesday, October 3). They had cards to open and our neighbor gave them gifts. Kara made presents. She made Jack a cool sign and she made Anna a mermaid care package, which consisted of a seashell necklace and a coconut bra! It was very funny and super creative.

We will have Jack's cake tomorrow (rather, we had on Friday, October 5). He wasn't picky about design, he just specified chocolate, and Thomas volunteered to make him a baseball cake. For his meal, he wants pizza hut stuffed crust, which we will also have tomorrow. He has chosen pizza for many years in a row. The girls used to choose homemade meals, but this year both chose restaurants, which makes things easy for me. I can't say I miss it. I also told Anna that my cake decorating days might be over. I will still probably make Luke's cakes for a bit longer. But, I am kind of tired of the tradition. I don't feel like my skills have improved much and it is a lot of work for not much reward.

On Saturday, we got up at our usual work/school time and headed to Valley Forge. Thomas dropped me, the girls and Luke off at the King of Prussia Mall and headed off to bike ride. I would have loved to join them, but Jack wanted to really explore the historical stuff and not everyone in our family is up for that. So, the compromise was that we all went on the trip, but separated into the shopping crew and the biking crew. Jack and Thomas spent about 4 hours biking and had a fantastic time. Jack loved it and says he wants to do this every year. They went to some of the things we didn't see last time. Which, I will have to ask Thomas to write about. Meanwhile, we shopped until we dropped, or at least browsed.

Here's what Thomas wrote:
The bike ride was really nice.  We had done it before, but with only two of us this time, it was a much more relaxed experience. We didn't have a specific agenda, which allowed us to take whatever trail sounded good and stop at any site we wanted.  One of those stops found us inside an old church.  As we walked out of it, Jack noticed some buildings down a small road behind the church.  We decided to check them out and our curiosity was rewarded when we discovered a small used book store!  It was very quaint and the volunteer worker was really friendly.  Jack and I ended up getting a few things, and they were nice enough to hold on to them for a few hours while we finished our bike ride.  All told, we spent about four hours at Valley Forge, but could have stayed even longer.  We didn't really spend much time in the visitor's center and there were plenty of other sites we could have checked out.  But we knew the rest of the family was waiting on us, so we packed up our stuff and headed back to the mall.  I'm proud that Jack chose such an enriching event to celebrate his birthday and I'm grateful that he allowed me to experience it with him.

Back to Kori:
The mall is huge (2nd biggest in America!) and has lots of high end and unusual stores. For starters, we looked at Teslas. They are pretty awesome. And, since we had no agenda and were in no hurry, I pretty much let the kids go in any store they wanted. We bought earrings at Claire's and had lunch in the food court. Gymboree was having an awesome clearance sale, everything on three racks was $5 or below, and the girls picked some summery dresses for our upcoming cruise and Luke chose some stuff as well. We played (or watched Luke play) in the play areas and tested all the mattresses in Macy's. The 4+ hours flew by. Thomas and Jack met us at the Macy's and I showed him all the things I want to redo our house with.

We checked into our hotel and relaxed before heading to dinner. I had it in my head that we were going to go to the Cheesecake Factory and was mightily disappointed when Jack chose Taco Bell. I have nothing against Taco Bell, but it's not exactly the kind of place you go to celebrate. Unless you are Jack, I guess. At least it was cheap. After we let him pick, Thomas reminded me that he had already gotten his birthday meal of stuffed crust pizza, so he shouldn't have even been allowed to choose. Next time, I am going to remember that!

Our plan for the next day was to stop at Six Flags on our way home. Which we did. However, it was bring-a-friend-free day and it was packed! I think it was the most crowded I've ever seen it. After my day in DC with Anna Saturday, I feel like everything around here is getting more crowded, but that's a rant for another day. We rode a few rides, had lunch, did the trick-or-treat trail and got out of there.

We still have Anna's Great Wolf Lodge trip to wrap up the 11th birthday celebration!