October 4

My Mom's birthday is the 8th, but due to scheduling conflicts, we decided to celebrate tonight. Since food trucks are my Dad's current favorite thing ever, and a bunch of them were convening nearby, our "how to celebrate?" issue was quickly resolved.

The kids and I eagerly waited on the front porch for Chris to get home from work so that we could head to Mom's birthday celebration.

Daisy was the first to spot Daddy's car. It happens like this most days - we like to wait on the front porch for him. The kids are always excited to see Daddy!

This was Daisy's first chance to play with her pumpkin. It probably weighs more than she does. (I wish I was kidding.)

The pumpkin may be bigger, but Daisy is friendlier.

And Daisy is stretchier.

And Daisy is sweeter. (Yep. She's kissing the pumpkin.) So I think Daisy wins.

Then we got to the food truck meet-up.

There were a lot of people.

TONS.

Gajillions of them. Most trucks had lines fifty to sixty people deep. We picked a spot and everyone headed off to get food while I stayed put with the kiddos.

I planned ahead and stocked up on glow-in-the-dark goodies, which are helpful now that it's getting dark so early!

(A few things to note: When we arrived, Jenny handed Caleb that shirt. He loved it. Also, his bracelet? A craft from MOPS this morning. He loves it, and wants to keep it on always. It has my phone number on it, in case he ever wanders off. However, it's almost unnecessary. He's gotten pretty good at rattling off my phone number!

Those cool shades glow in the dark.

Also, Daisy chose her dress. I wanted her to wear something else, but she didn't like it. So I took her to her closet and allowed her to choose. She picked this one because she thought the polka-dots were moons. Again, not even kidding.

There was some live music, so Caleb got his groove on. For his first three years, he was a staunch non-dancer. But lately he's been surprising us with his energetic dance moves! Oh, and that thing in his hand? A packaging tube for one of the glow necklaces. Caleb preferred the packaging over the actual necklaces. Go figure.

Here he's dancing with the tube and his birthday gift for grandma: a "fairy wand" he chose at the Dollar Store. For birthdays, I like taking him there and letting him choose any one thing to give as a gift. This was a little balloon on a stick, but he immediately called it a wand. At home, we added the ribbon to make it more fairy-like.

You'll note that the pictures are growing increasingly dark, and yet there's no food. Chris waited in line for over an hour to get grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids. Dad waited in line for gyros, but they ran out of gas. The trucks with the best food (including the all-important cupcake truck!) ran out of food early and closed.

Then it got cold and windy. When we left the house, it was in the low 80s, but by 7:30 it was probably closer to 60 and windy.

By the time we finally had food, most of the people were gone.

We shut that party down!

Caleb parties non-stop!

So in the end, Mom's birthday celebration involved no real gifts, one leftover pumpkin whoopie pie with a glow-stick candle (it was too windy for a real one - believe me, we tried!), and a cold family, huddled in blankets, eagerly wolfing down the last of the quesadillas from the taco truck. After we sang "Happy Birthday", Caleb came up to Mom and said, "I was thinking there might be some presents?"  Poor boy was disappointed that Grandma didn't have anything to open. 

The evening definitely wasn't what we expected, but something tells me that Mom didn't mind.