Chase hit his 15th birthday at the end of October. Yes, like every year, it landed on the busiest weekend of the month with the school Halloween Carnival one night and his birthday and the neighborhood Trunk-or-Treat the next. Luckily he's getting more self-sufficient as he gets older and doesn't need quite as much birthday-party overseeing as he used to. No theme, no specially shaped cakes, hallelujah. He just wanted to invite friends over for pizza and to watch a movie in the back yard. His birthday is always tricky because we don't know just when the weather will break. The weather usually seems to have a cold snap at the end of October and we kind of have to take a gamble on when it will be when we plan outside events. I'll confess that it did get pretty chilly for the gang of movie-watching kids. We pretty much dragged every single blanket we own out to the back lawn but it was pretty cute to see them all snuggled up out there, watching Spider-Man Homecoming and absolutely inhaling pizza.
I've been so happy that Chase has made so many friends. And kept so many friends, really. There is a group of boys that he met in kindergarten and 1st grade who have all stayed pretty close. That amazes me, that in his freshman year of high school he's still hanging out with kids he had play dates with in kindergarten. Plus, once he started junior high, he made some new friends really quickly and I just really like them all.
Of course we celebrated Chase's birthday all day long, not just that evening. We started by heading to the zoo. Well, that was our plan anyhow. We really wanted to see the new polar bears who just moved in, and it's always fun to walk around the zoo on a sunny fall morning, munching on popcorn and sipping a wee bit of Diet Coke. (That's just me but it's true.) However, as we pulled up at 5 to 9:00 in the morning, the parking lot was so full that people were already parking across the street in the overflow parking. What the.....? Oh. It turned out to be the annual "Boo at the Zoo" day, where kids come in costume and can trick or treat all around the zoo. No thanks! We had a quick family council and decided to head on out south to the fabulous Sheels store, which is really just a massive sporting goods store, but since it has tons of cool stuff like real fish and taxidermied animals and a ferris wheel, we decided it would be fun enough for us. Off we went and just enjoyed being together, wandering the store, riding the ferris wheel, trying to keep Chase from blowing every penny he had on low quality knives that looked like they came out of Lord of the Rings. It was a fun morning.
One of the things Chase really wanted for his birthday was a trip to Red Lobster. Since it costs us in the three figures to go out to lunch there as a family, we decided that just one parent would go with him. I drew the lucky straw this year, and he and I went and had ourselves a date with some seafood. That kid loves seafood. He wanted it ALL. We decided that I would get a cup of soup and he would get a massive platter of seafood so large that it took up half the table. Only a slight exaggeration there. It was lobster tail. It was crab legs. It was shrimp cooked three different ways. The child was in seafood heaven. I just sipped my soup and watched him make his way through almost all of it. I love our before and after pictures. They make me laugh really hard.
It wasn't long after our lunch that I needed to get ready for the neighborhood Trunk or Treat - Emma's costume required some face painting and plus I had to get the house ready for a herd of highschool freshmen to descend upon it. Luckily my good husband Troy had very little desire to go to the trunk or treat. He was only too happy to stay home and monitor teens. The girls and I got home in time to catch the second half of the movie and be the blanket brigade, trying to keep the shiverers warm. Did I even make a cake? I think I did...though I'm pretty sure I let them all come inside to warm up while they ate it.
Great group of kids, celebrating a great kid. Happy Birthday Chase. He's talking a lot about driving now and I am so not ready for that. But I guess it's coming, ready or not. Gulp.
Birthday Breakfast with a couple of presents:
Out to lunch at Red Lobster:
Hanging out at the trunk or treat partly to escape Chase's party....
Chase's Fab 15 party:
We all love Chase's friends.
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