Play Dates and Birthday Parties
I’m really glad my son is settling in at his new school so well. He already has what seems is a BFF and we had a play date with him. It was a playground date and we went to meet him and his mother there. My GOODNESS five/nearly-five year old boys have energy. We adults could barely keep up. I think we adults got quite a number of steps/burned QUITE the calories just running after them, making sure they don’t get hurt! My guy LOVES to climb ropes. I think his school has a climbing wall in the middle/senior school and that could be a thing he’d be involved with in the future! The playground we were at has a pirate ship type contraption for kids to climb into and I TRIED to get Jr. Mintz to say “I’m King of the WORLD!!!!” a la Leo/Jack Dawson. Of course, he has NO IDEA of that reference. Maybe some day.
We’re planning his birthday party. It’ll be his first with school friends - we weren’t sure about having one last year, since many of us were still masked/didn’t think anyone was even HAVING non-family/venue parties. By the time we wanted to (which was just after school started), all venues for the dates we wanted were booked up. So we waited. Anyway, we found a cute spot that wasn’t too far from us. I first booked a smaller package, but we’re going to be upgrading. The premium one is more adult-friendly (in terms of food), since parents are invited as well. Many of the kids will be coming with both. Plus it includes balloons AND loot bags. The only thing it DOES NOT have is cake. I’ve already picked a cake place - Sticky Bakery. It was started by the woman from Prairie Girl Bakery, so it’s going to be good. The cupcakes are bigger though. They come in packages of six, so depending on numbers, it’ll either be 30 or 36. A dozen of them will be vegan. To make things easy, ALL vegan ones will have (vegan) chocolate frosting and a coconut topping. The remaining will be vanilla or vanilla and red velvet. Frosting will vary.
That’s pretty much it for the update. Nothing else is really going on…I mean, if you heard my recent podcast episode, you’d know that I got my AncestryDNA results. I’ll probably get into the results later, either here or on the October episode. I mean, it’s not surprising, other than, maybe my 2% Dai heritage, though it’s something I’ve also suspected. Kind of, anyway - I’ve always been asked by people if I was 100% Chinese (and by “Chinese,” people usually mean Han) or whether I’m XYZ kind of Asian (usually Filipino or Vietnamese. Sometimes Thai). I guess I can now say I’m 2% Dai. It’s an ethnic Chinese minority that has largely settled in Myanmar (Burma) with some in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand as well. All very interesting. Meanwhile, my husband is 98% Ashkenazi (quelle suprise #sarcasm) and 2% Aegean (now THAT was surprising for him, I think).
Images taken by my husband, Adam