Nixon's first board game and a family game day was had!

* I picked up Nixon from school and we headed off to a store so Nixon could pick out a board game (or 2) with the money his Nana sent him for Halloween. I've been hanging on to it, waiting for a reason to let Nixon spend it. Today seemed a good idea because his birthday's coming up and it's starting to get colder so board games will keep him busy when it's very cold outside.
   Nixon chose a Skylander's game that's just like Trouble: popper in the center holding the dice, and pegs you move according to the number on the dice.
    We played as soon as we got home. Nixon won the first game, totally fair and square! And he was super happy and excited too! He wanted to play over and over and over again. He even played a game by himself while Mac and I ate our dinners!

* Nixon's birthday party will be next Monday. We've got a couple friends coming over to celebrate with us. He's finally decided his theme will be My Little Pony. I took him to the nearest party store today and let him see all the options and he was super into the My Little Pony supplies!
   He also got to chose his cupcakes: pastel confetti cake mix, pink frosting and silver sugar glitter! He's super happy about the silver sugar glitter. He spent the rest of our time in the store carrying his sugar glitter around.
   I love my son and the simple things that make him so happy.

Today's lesson: budgeting

* Today I tried teaching Nixon about money and budgeting. It was a fail, but not really on his part.
   There was a large yard sale very local to us, that was all geek stuff: GI Joes, Transformers, Star Wars, video games, comic books...just amazing years of collection. We gave Nixon $5 for the yard sale, it was his to spend on whatever he liked. He saw an old GI Joe Cobra 4-wheeler, and went searching for a red guy to ride it. It had to be red because the 4-wheeler was red. Later he found a Bumblebee transformer that he liked. Those 3 totalled his $5 and he was good with that.
   He spent the rest of the time playing with all three toys, and making his awesome robot sounds and "pew, pew" sounds. The guy selling everything came over and started talking to Nixon (and us). He ended up just giving Nixon the toys he'd picked out! He even grabbed another Transformer and gave him that one as well.
   We paid for everything else we'd picked out and all said our "Thank you"'s. Seriously, this guy was just looking to know that his collection was going to be appreciated and enjoyed and while he is selling to raise money for his family, you could tell it was more about seeing the joy his collection was bringing to other people.
   He is a wonderful guy and Nixon is very happy because of this man's generosity.

* Nixon is picking up on sarcasm, almost a little too well. He keeps saying "I love you Daddy" but the way he says it sounds like he just told us to eff off! As long as we're not getting complaints that he's doing this at school, we're good with it. He's gotta be allowed to develop his own sense of self and there's no safer place than at home.