Brazenly Burton

Alaster and I headed home for a bit but made a quick stop at Walmart.
A gregarious woman dressed head to toe in bright green and sporting a golden crown welcomed us. She was accepting donations for St. Jude's Children's Hospital.
We had some cash so I took Aly over to drop in a $.
Well... that green woman fell in love. She took pictures of Aly and they had quite a conversation. When she found out Aly's brother in Kindergarten was celebrating a birthday that day she bought the whole class sugar cookies! Can you believe that? She wouldn't take "no," for an answer.
Now you tell me the last time something like that happened to you. We were so touched.
Actually just this morning I finally got Jack back over there to meet her and to offer his Thanks.

So... Green Cookies (and M&M Cookies that I made the night before) in hand, Aly and I headed back to the school.
First on the agenda: Hand out cookies to all the kiddo's. Jack was given the privilege of handing out cookies, and the teacher allowed him to choose someone to help. Do you want to know who he chose? Not Ethan P. Not Owen. Not Ayden, or Faye or Oscar. Alaster! I wanted to stop everything and give him a big fat kiss. Instead I helped Aly in his cookie distributing duties.
We finished first. Here is Jack finishing up:

The kids ate their treats and then we got to the portion of events Jack was most excited about. All the kiddos sat on the rug and Mrs. Peterson had the following dialogue with Jack:

MP: Jack, what are your two favorite colors?

Jack: Red and Blue

MP: Can the class use more than those two colors, or just those two?

Jack: Whatever colors they want.

Class: Yaaayyyy!!!

MP: What is your favorite animal?

Jack: Cow.

Me (in my head): Whaaat?!? This morning he said he was going to say "spider."
Matthew: I thought you said dragons were your favorite.

Jack: Oh yeah... ummm... dragons, yeah... I mean dragon-cows.... yeah... my favorite is dragon-cows.

MP: Alllright... can they just do dragons?

Jack: Yeah.

(Matthew, I will have you know, drew a very nice dragon-cow for Jack. What a sweet boy!)

MP: Alright class... (followed by more instructions)

The class was making Jack's Birthday Book. Everyone had to draw a dragon, write "Happy Birthday Jack," along with a personalized message of some kind, their name... and I think that was it? Maybe? After they finished it and she had okay-ed their work, she stapled all the pages together to make a book for him. He was SO thrilled to have his Birthday Book. He loves it, loves it. Here he is answering the questions with a totally darling look on his face:

And off they go to work:

Jack was very proud of his dragon. He drew Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. Cute.

Thankfully he was able to come home right after the party. Welcome Spring Break!

I went to work in the afternoon, and the boys had a wonderful time with Daddy. I'm pretty sure they spent the majority of the evening romping about outside.

When I came home I set to work on his requested birthday dinner: Ratatouille. Our whole family is so totally in love with this recipe. We were thrilled he chose this instead of something predictable. Top Left in the collage: You can see pictures of how pretty it looks after you get the veggies all lined up in the pan... beautiful layers of Red, Purple, Yellow and Green. It gives my heart a little thrill everytime I make it. And yes... you can wrap it around circularly- Disney's Ratatouille style, but I have found it cooks more evenly this way. We had brown rice and steamed broccoli on the side.

After dinner came presents, one of which- a new telescope- is pictured here. Then it was time for pajamas and canned peaches! (Jack's favorite food in all the land!)

He also was treated with many phone calls from family far, far away... we love you guys!

The night was topped off with a special treat: Parent Teacher conferences, wherein we went to school and Mrs. P. sung Jack's praises telling us how smart and wonderful he is... nothing we didn't already know, but it was lovely to hear it from her anyhow.

All in all: A special birthday for one very special little boy!