Pieces of Eight

Goodbye, seven.  Hello, eight!  Today is Madison's eighth birthday, which she's quite proud of:  eight is a lucky number in China, she says.  Indeed!  Today is a Sunday, so we of course started it out at church, where that luck was tested just a bit...

Here is Madison on stage in the big kids' service - that's Daddy's territory.  She and her friends in first grade sat with the older kids in the big auditorium for joint service this morning, and we did one feature that we always do:  the KidPak race.  This is an animated race with three characters, usually a boy versus a girl versus someone completely random.  We used a gladiator race from our Gladiators series some time ago, and it happens that the three racers are Nitro, Malibu and Gemini.  Yes, those are names of American Gladiators, that old show from the 90's.  That was a tongue-in-cheek thing we did there in reference to the gladiator name.  But the series itself was all about the book of Romans, and was a lot of fun to do.  ANYWAY, one of the Tribes in our current series is that of the Gladiators, and so this morning we did a Gladiator race to honor that group of kids (the second graders).  IT JUST SO HAPPENS that the female racer is named GEMINI, which only a few days ago Daddy discovered was the constellation of Madison's birth.  And here we are on her birthday, and she's told to choose a racer, and there's the girl named Gemini.  Of course, that's who she went with.  And of course, Gemini won and all the girls in the auditorium cheered.  But all the girls and boys did something else for Madison this morning:  all of KidPak sang "Happy Birthday" to Madison on her special day!

It was a great morning at church - we did a skit with a World Cup theme, which turned out really good.  The characters in the skit did a great job with the overall message, which was fun and solid, I thought.  Mommy put these costumes together last night - these athletes below are from the country of Luchadoria:

Soon, it was time to go though - it was Father's Day also.  Our church was offering chocolate covered bacon for the dads, but we all shared a bite:  it was okay.  I like bacon, and I love chocolate.  But this sort of chocolate covered bacon didn't necessarily mix well.  We didn't hate it, and in fact were glad to try it out.  BUT... it's not something we'd go out and intentionally order at a fine dining establishment!

Anyway, afterwards we went to Nana and Ye-Ye's house, because as I said earlier:  it was Father's Day.  But it was also Madison's birthday, of course - so there was all kinds of things going on for the family.  We got over there, and the state of the day apparently was MARYLAND.  The last few days Madison and Daddy have been going over a different state each day, covering New York and Texas.  We say Maryland for today, because that was what the food was:  crab and corn on the cob, and those big steam pots on the table.

There was so much crab to eat, it was ridiculous.  And it was all delicious.  The thing about this sort of meal is how long it takes to eat it, as each person was sitting there meticulously shelling each one and stockpiling and arsenal of crabmeat for the harvest.  But that's not a bad thing - it just meant more time to sit and talk with one another about this or that, about Father's Day and future plans, and about all the recent goings-ons.

But after that amazing meal, it was also time for cake!

Everyone sang Happy Birthday to Madison once again, and there was a cake to devour.  It had a "Frozen" theme to it, covered with white icing, and marshmallow snowmen.  Madison got several "Frozen" items for her birthday - no dress yet though.  That dress is apparently very hard to come by, and the laws of supply and demand have made it a pretty pricy item.  Think of the movie "Jingle All the Way," and you'll have a good idea about how capitalism works when it comes to Queen Elsa.  Still, we anticipate having that dress for Madison soon enough - I think Santa can arrange for her to have it under the tree, don't you?

In the meantime, the haul she got for her birthday was tremendous:  the Lego Movie video game was a big moment.  So was the Barbie movie "The Princess and the Popstar."  But all the "Frozen" figures and books were nice as well - in fact, Daddy already has to insert them in the reading program list as "yes, I've read that."

Thanks to the family, Madison got a lot for her birthday, and was quite content.  She spent much of the day playing with her cousin Hannah upstairs, but as soon as we got home, the X-box got turned on and it was time to try out the Lego Movie Game.  And for the rest of Madison's birthday, everything was indeed awesome.