An eighth birthday in the midst of an ice-storm…

There were mama-made gifts and a brother made gift and the gift of visiting family from far away.

I put the chords to “Happy Birthday” in his Wonder Book, which inspired a full out sing-along of every song he’s ever played.

There was a special dinner and gingerbread…

and one splurge of a very cool gift.

He’s been wanting a camera for ages and this year we set out to see if we could find him one.  Nothing that we came across was very satisfying…that is, until we found the Bigshot build it yourself camera kit, which also happened to be way more money then we wanted to spend.  The problem was, after we saw that, nothing else came even close to comparing for this boy of ours who truly needs to know exactly how everything works.  Finally we asked a couple of other people to chip in and went for it.

Of course it absolutely had to be built right away…

Self portrait from this morning.  He’s really enjoying the timer setting!