Joseph's Birthday, a little late

Guess who finally forked over six dollars and bought herself a new cable to connect the camera and the computer?

We rearranged our "office" awhile back and my not-so-UniversalSB cable for my camera disappeared.  I'm sure I'll find it tomorrow now that I've finally replaced it.  In the meantime, we've been pretty busy and I'll try to catch you up a bit.

Joseph also requested coffee cake for his birthday breakfast but we held off on a birthday cake until his party the next night.

 

I think he's excited about the treasure hunt.  Not sure why Isaac rearranged the furniture.

Joseph is now seven and we  had a lovely time celebrating accordingly.  After the big shebang we had for Margaret I was hoping for something a little quieter for Joseph and he was fine with that idea.  We had coffee cake for breakfast on his actual birthday and fried fish for dinner (his choice).  The next day his best friend, Andrew, came over, as usual.  I planned a very simple "pirate treasure hunt" for them.  Honestly, I wasn't sure it would be blog-worthy.  I typed up six very simple clues like, "Where do we go when we want to read about Hammurabi?"  Answer:  his history text.

Retrieving a clue from Margaret's sweater bin.

Studying a clue in the kitchen.

 I was worried about making them too easy or too hard but I think that the following along of the game was what was most fun.  Joseph didn't have to think more than a few seconds about each clue but he had a blast "hunting" for his treasure.

Thinking hard . . . where could the last clue be?

Found it . . . but where's the treasure?

On a whim I also made a very simple map of the entire route and this turned out to be a hit with Andrew who loves anything in the in maze/map genre.  He took charge of the map, Joseph read aloud the clues and together they found the treasure. At the end, Andrew immediately made another treasure map and convinced Joseph to play again.

A treasure chest!

With treasure!

Since Halloween was a bust due to sickness and rain the "treasure candy" was a nice stand-in.

And how is our not-so-little seven-year-old?  Joseph spends pretty much all of his spare time either reading or drawing. The last few weeks he's branched out a little into creating 3-D toys out of paper.  He's been really interested in drawing various characters lately and is working on a whole crew of pirates to decorate his bedroom walls.  We love his drawings and it is really fun to see the evolution of his artistic sense.  I will try to scan and post some of his work before too long.

He reads voraciously and has inherited my tendency to be completely oblivious to everything around me if I have a book in my hand.  Now that I see how annoying this can be, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to my parents.  But, of course, we're thrilled that Joseph reads so much.  He likes everything:  novels, picture books, non-fiction of all kinds, poetry, magazines.  He'll even pick up the Wall Street Journal, in a pinch.  And, happiest of all, from my perspective, he's often very willing to read to his younger siblings.  He has a real knack for expression and nuance when he reads out loud.

So there's a bit about our most recent birthday boy.  More to come!