Happy 11th Birthday Kai Wei!

Summer is birthday season in our family. It starts off in May with Tim's birthday, and then Jonathan and Rebecca both have birthdays in June. So, Kai Wei has had a lot of time to see what our birthday celebrations are like and to decide what he wants. For weeks now, he's been telling us "For my birthday, you buy me...." or, "I want cherry pie on my birthday" (That's what Rebecca had on hers since my parents and the boys went cherry picking just the day before and came home with over 20 pounds of cherries). He asked for xia (shrimp) and long xia (lobster) and has been counting down the days to his birthday since the end of June. He asked each of us, with a whole lot of joy and a bit of disbelief, "You wanna give me dongxi?" (dongxi just means things- he doesn't always remember the word present yet).

So, needless to say, today he was quite excited. The morning started off well. We let him open one present- a super soaker. My Mom got smaller squirt guns as "party favors" for Jonathan and Daniel and our cousins Matt and Abby, so the kids all went outside and had a squirt gun fight. After that, I think the day got a bit long for Kai Wei. He told Rebecca, "my birthday so slow!"

As the pile of presents on the hutch grew it got harder and harder for him to wait. My Aunt Beth and Uncle Doug and their kids Matt and Abby are staying at our house right now, and our grandparents and Aunt Jan and Uncle Mark also came over for dinner. We started off with shrimp for an appetizer, as per Kai Wei's request. Kai also had a lobster to himself. My Uncle showed him how to get all the good meat out and Kai had a lot of fun and was quite impressed by the meat in the tail. He was nice and even shared the little legs with his cousins and brothers.

After dinner we teased him that he couldn't open gifts until Saturday, but he didn't like that idea. It was so much fun watching him open his gifts. He was so excited and cute about everything. Instead of tearing into the gifts he carefully cut the ribbons off and slit the paper with scissors and stacked it all neatly. He might have been methodical about opening them, but he was so enthusiastic once they were opened. His eyes shone and he made the cutest comments. He was happy with all his presents and couldn't quite believe how many there were. As soon as they were all opened he wanted to go play with his lego sets and had to be coaxed back downstairs to blow out candles. He didn't even eat his pie until a few moments ago when he came down and told me, "me too much dongxi. da da da books. da da da lego. Me and Daniel long time bu hao bored"
(hmm, we really do speak a lot of Chinglish around here- in other words "I have so many things! A lot of legos and a lot of books. Daniel and I won't be bored for a long time!")

Super. That's the way we like it. :)