Lego-rific birthday party

It's little secret that the seven-year-old elder lad likes Legos a whole lot, so it should come as no surprise that the theme for his seventh birthday festivities drew inspiration from those "bricks".    The lad's birthday coincided with Father's Day, which made me think back to the lad's very first weekend of life.  He was born in the first hour of Friday morning (after a long, long, long time in labor), and Father's Day was that Sunday.  We had our dads, the new grandfathers, come to our little house for a quiet but festive Father's Day celebration that year. 

This year we celebrated the two-in-one holiday with a Father's Day brunch after Mass for the dads on my beloved's side of the family with swimming and water frolicking that morning, followed by a birthday party that afternoon for the elder lad with our immediate family at our house.

For the family birthday party, Grandmare of course dreamed up some fun games with a Lego spin, including a board game...

...the rules to which soon tweaked by the game players (which is just like them to do).

The games also included one involving plastic tubing (already a winner in our lads' estimation, as they very quickly began to imagine all the fun they'd have with that tubing and some water) and the manipulation of Legos through it in race-like fashion, and a Lego piñata that the lad made with his grandmother.

 There was a chocolate cake that the lad and I made together using Cooks Illustrated's "simple chocolate sheet cake" recipe that we (and by "we" I mean he) frosted with chocolate buttercream using a recipe I adapted from Martha Stewart (meaning I cut the sugar practically in half and added a little bit of cream cheese to the mixture).  In keeping with the Lego theme, he decided early on he wanted to use his prize Lego firetruck that stays assembled all the time.  We made the cake a warehouse on fire in need of the firetruck's services.  This worked out beautifully for me, as I only needed to pipe on some windows and doors and the requisite "happy birthday" conveyance. 

Since his birthday was the day before Vacation Bible School, I made arrangements to supply a birthday treat for him to celebrate with the friends in his VBS group.  He requested a double-layer cookie cake.  Whoever heard of such a thing?!  Apparently it was quite the rage this past year in First Grade.  Using this recipe from Ghirardelli (minus macadamia nuts) times two and more buttercream frosting (ee-gads), we came up with this:

Imagine, if you will, the Lego minifigure head.  This will help greatly in deciphering the frosting code of this cookie cake.

 More than sufficiently sugared up, the elder lad and his buddies went on to have a fun day riding the "Vatican Express." 

The festivities are over, but the Lego-ing continues even as the lad has fallen ill to a sore throat of sorts the past couple of days.  For the possibilities the Lego bricks provide by way of imagination into reality (of sorts) and the opportunity to parlay our lad's love for Legos into a celebration that was fun for the whole family, we are grateful for the blessing that is the lad's life and all that he brings to each of ours.