And then we said "adios" to the dog.

Yeah.  As it turns out, allergy medicine makes me the meanest person on earth (worse than pregnancy, which is scary), and then my allergies I was trying to convince myself were fake, were getting worse by the second (even on allergy medicine).  And Mike and I made an executive decision it would be 10000x better to say goodbye to little Mario before Mitchell's birthday, rather than after.

The most heartbreaking decision ever.  And I was terrified to tell my kids.  We explained that he makes mom sick and neither of them seemed emotionally scarred from it.  Mitchell said, "so can we get a white dog?"  uhhhhhh.....maybe?

So within a few hours of posting the little dog on KSL, a nice lady called and wanted him.  So the kids and I gathered the dog toys and said goodbye.  I scooped up the kids and went to Sonic (the hardest part is seeing them go, right?) and Mitchell asked who was taking Mario and I came up with the most elaborate lie imaginative story ever including fields of gold and lots of dog friends and Mitchell was fine.  I mean, surprisingly fine.  Strangely fine, even.  I mean I cried, but no one else did.  Which was stupid, since I was the one with the problem to begin with.

"And this is how we drown our sorrows with food, kids"

We got back home and Mitchell and Ali climbed on my computer to look at pictures, which is something they are always doing.  Mitchell saw a picture of Mario and said, matter-of-factly, "oh, mom.  Remember when we got a dog?"  oh, man.

So then, to get my the kids mind off of little Mario, we took the kids to see Monster's University.  We hardly ever see movies, and I easily forget how much I enjoy seeing movies with my kids.  Mitchell wants to be "a scarer" when he grows up.

And only a few days later, he turned 5.  We got him a bunch of little Mario figurines, since he's been using Ali's Tangled figurines and legos to set up elaborate game courses (which is hilarious, I have to say.  He hums the Mario music and moves "Flynn" around up and over various lego blocks.  One time he made "Bowser's Castle" which was actually pretty impressive.)

So I wrapped all these figurines separately and scattered them around his floor to wake up to.  And when he did wake up, he didn't even notice.  When I showed him all my sneakiness, he delighted in opening all of them, but Bowser and Toad were not included (and look, I tried.  I did.  Bowser alone is like 20 dollars so I took my chances that he'd be fine. (false)  And now "Santa" is on the hook for Bowser and Toad and since they're all on clearance (to the internet this means "rare" and "expensive") I better do this soon.)

And so now his Mario games are much more realistic and still just as awesome as ever.

We have this tradition of picking out birthday balloons the day before the big day at the local party store.  Mitchell thought quite deeply about this for weeks.  Orange, of course, but blue? white? red? do they have rainbow color mom?

So they have lots of colors.  He initially picked out one orange, one white, one blue, and then we found their large selection of "happy birthday" balloons and he picked out another 3 in pink (for Ali's chair, he's very thoughtful), black, and a darker blue.  So we're not necessarily matching our balloons, anymore.  But it was adorable.  And I was out of paper products, so I let him pick out some at Zurchers.  Spiderman, of course.  Because what else would be appropriate.  Matching his cake.

His cake. "Mitchell.  What kind of cake do you want for your birthday? Chocolate?"

"I want an orange cake from Sam's Club"

"You don't want me to make it this year?"

"Mother, you screw up birthday cakes every single time and I'm not taking my chances on you.  I tell you all the time that you're the "best cooker" but I really only mean for your chicken and cookies. Your cakes are really terrible, and it's my birthday, obviously"

No.  I'm joking.  He said, "Mom! You SAID that FOR MY BIRTHDAY I could have a Sam's Club cake"

Which is true.  He sees those beautiful and nasty cakes at Sam's Club and the balloons on them are a pretty obvious clue they are meant  for birthdays.

So when we ordered the cake (the half-sheet cake, naturally, you know the one that feeds 36-48 people), we flipped through the catalogue and spiderman cakes exist, so we went with that.  And an orange border, since 4 year old Mitchell loved orange (5 year old Mitchell, as he informed me the morning of his birthday, now loves blue)  and even though spider man is red and blue, Sam's Club humored us with the non-matching neon orange.

Non-matching to match the rest of our non-matching decor.


And you know, then we gave him some super exciting church clothes and some washable markers and a "letter/number/math K-2" education laminate thing.  He loves his traceable alphabet mat, so this is like the new and improved and more elaborate version.

And because of the whole Mario the dog saga, we decided to take him to Toys R Us and let him pick out whatever toy his little heart decided.  I bet they have a robot dog, Mitchell, one that does tricks!  He was excited about that.

Toys R Us is a very stressful situation for Mitchell.  Any toy means he has to browse the store 5.5 billion times. After narrowing his choices down to on Captain Hook's Jolly Roger, the companion piece to his pirate ship, or Captain Hook's Pirate Island, he suddenly remembered we were going to try to find a robot dog.

Turns out Toys R Us doesn't carry every toy in my head.  Whoops.  Santa's on the hook for that thing too.  I'm hoping they still exist.

Then Mitchell wanted to try and find Bowser and Toad.  Bowser was bundled with Peach and Mario, and Toad did not exist. This was unacceptable to Mitchell. So we walked to the other end of the store to look at play dough, and walked down the art isle and Mitchell officially picked, finally, the 25 dollar bucket of every single art supply you can ever imagine.

Crayola was buy one get one half off, so I tried to coax Ali into humoring her creative side but she was insistent on the Minnie Mouse toy she decided on, two hours ago, 5.5 seconds after walking into the store.

And later,  I remember why I stopped buying markers.

And then we had to pick up the cake, get the traditional lollies, buy some ice cream, pick up a birthday package stuck at the post office, come home and make it magically look like we sort of clean at least semi-frequently and then tackle at least 2 loads of laundry.

So pictures of the days events didn't happen, since Toys R Us took 500% longer than anticipated.

And then we had "blue waffles" for dinner.  That's code for waffles out of a blue box, rather than the frozen variety.  (Look, mornings wouldn't even happen if I had to actually make breakfast).  Mike decided to be awesome, and added chocolate chips to the batch.  Mitchell wasn't happy about this.  "Just try it, please.  It's like candy, literally!" and I convinced him to take one bite.  "mmmmmm!" he said, happily.  "Is it good?" I asked.  "No. I just want it regular" said Mitchell.

So round two of the blue waffles happened.  Birthdays.

And then a family party happened, with more toys, and a video game "Cars"  from grandma, that Mike loves too.  The next night, after the kids were in bed Mike asked me "Do you want to play cars?"  I thought he said "cards" so I said yes, and he flipped on the wii and handed me a controller.  "Wait what? Is it really that fun?"  Mike was egging to play this game with Mitchell all day.  Who wouldn't play with him "Dadddd.  It's SUNDAY!" he kept saying.  Mike was trying to make an exception but Mitchell wasn't having any of it.

Funny kid.  I'd say I'm happy he's five, but I wish he'd stop growing up so fast.  I told Ali to stop growing up and she slowly stood on her tippy-toes and slowly reached her hands into the air.  "I groowinnng up!" with this evil laugh she's perfected.  At least Mitchell sympathizes with me.  "oh, mom.  I have to grow up.  Everyone does. Even you!"

*sigh* Happy Birthday Mitchell!