08.08.08

Yesterday was Owen's 6th birthday. About a month ago I was racking my braing to think up clever birthday party ideas because he's born on 8/8 and it being 2008, and the opening day of the olympics I thought I should come up with something magnificent. I thought it might be neat to rent space in a park, invite a bunch of his friends and hold our own sort of mini-olympics. You know get a cake with the olympic rings on it, maybe have cupcakes with different countries flags on them and the kids could compete in fun races representing different countries and I could give out medals to everyone. But Owen isn't terribly atheletic, so it might not bode well if everyone but the birthday boy is winning gold. And Toby has been so busy with school and negotiations with US Steel I just decided to opt for the path of least stress and trouble. So Owen picked a friend, Thalia, a very sweet neighbor from across the street that Owen took swim lessons with, to come along for dinner and a movie with us.

Owen was so excited about his birthday date night. It's all he talked about for most of the week, well that and how many days it was until his birthday. He wanted to dress up in black pants, a black jacket with a rose and a top hat. When I suggested that he might be a bit hot in an outfit like that we were able to agree that being dressed in a nice clean outfit would be perfect. Being a newly minted 6 year old he didn't want to change clothes after a day at camp and went in his dirty shorts and star wars shirt. Those kids really put away the food at Max & Erma's, home of the sundae bar, complete with bright blue whipped cream - I just can't embrace foods in the wrong colors. I mean a naturally blue potato is one thing but the garishness of bright blue whipped cream or when Heinz was making green and purple ketchup, yuck!

After dinner we went to see Wall e, which I loved. The kids really seemed to like it too, this was Thalia's second viewing. It was Oona's first trip to the movies. She was beyond excited. That girl is such a force, I've never seen someone so animated when experiencing joy. She kept bouncing up and down in her seat laughing and smiling at all the previews, one about chihuahuas in Beverly Hills really made her ecstatic. She wasn't the most well behaved during the movie (unlike Owen, who's better than some adults) but there were only 6 other people in the theater and we were all spread out so it wasn't disruptive. That might have been a hard first movie for her too since the first half has barely any dialogue. Although that was my favorite part of the movie, the animation was much prettier when it was just the two robots and the cockroach on earth. I think the thing to do is take her to movies after they've been in the theater for a while so there aren't a lot of people to worry about disturbing. Although sometimes I wonder why I'm so polite, on the rare occasions I get to see a movie people are always talking on their cell phone or texting or making stupid comments about the film very loudly. Why is it the dummies at the zoo, museum, or movies are always the most vocal ones? I want to be like Woody Allen in Annie Hall and bring in an authority to silence the imbeciles.

In other news. Toby took the kids for the weekend to his parents and I have no furniture to refinish so I'm planning on going to see the X-files tonight. I can't imagine that anyone under 35 will be there. I had bought a bunch of jumble cookies from Whole Foods (they're my favorite, with everything but the kitchen sink thrown in) to eat at the movies but I already ate them (sugar heavy dinner) so I might have to break down and get some twizzlers for $4.