Monday, June 06, 2011

Double-Digits


With both boys' birthdays in June - right in the middle of parties, picnics, and other end-of-the-school-year events, I sometimes get a bit behind in the planning. This year, we spent the 5-day "Christ goes up into heaven" Thursday/Friday and Sweden's National Day Monday holidays in Montana, hoping in vain for better weather than in Sweden. Benjamin's 10th birthday is today - the same day as Sweden's national day.

So on Wednesday, still in Sweden, I realized that we needed to get busy with the planning, so I raced out to Mörby Centrum and bought the hamster cage - for the hamster he will receive in August, after the summer holidays. The rest of the gifts I left for some Swiss shopping.

Bad idea.

Annika, Christopher and I finally had a moment alone to shop while David bribed Benjamin with a golf cart driving lesson (and a cash payment) to follow along on a round of golf. Sunday. The day before the big day. And everything is closed in Switzerland. We finally found the only open store in the whole area - the gas station rest stop on the motorway - and did the best we could. They actually had a pretty good selection, so we settled for...
  • Swiss-flag bag with Swiss pencils, a Swiss notebook, Swiss balloons and a Swiss cowbell (clearly catering to the tourists)
  • Magazines (in French, but the toys are the important part - Mario and Lego Atlantis)
  • Ping pong paddles
  • A couple of inexpensive flying toys
  • Birthday candles (clearly I'm not the only one who is bad at planning)
AND a party bomb. It promised that it would be ok indoors... but we did it outside, just in case. Lighting matches and placing them on our floors were just not quite what we had in mind. To great anticipation, we watched the fuse burn, and then a BOOM, the lid flew off, and a pile of toys flew about a foot in the air. Very exciting.

So what's new with 10? Not much. And he didn't seem to notice that the presents came from the roadside shop. The best toy by far? The balloons.