Xan's 7th Birthday...

... was a fairly quiet one. With plans (that ended up falling through) to go to Okinawa, plus Rodney trying to get to Okinawa for a Master Sergeant seminar, it's been a crazy time for us. But Xan didn't seem to mind.

We kicked the day off with his birthday spankings from his Dad...

Then we headed off to a late breakfast at JDs... where he got a happy birthday cheesecake and ice cream after eating his pancakes dripping in syrup. Yum! Sugar rush!

Will and Rodney then went "birthday" shopping while Xan and I stayed home. Will came home with a gift he had bought for Xan. and Rodney came home with a nice cream cake Xan had requested.

We celebrated with cake after supper (which was Xan's favorite, spaghetti), and our neighbors, the Cruz's, came over to help us celebrate. I forgot to get candles, so we made due with one of the emergency candles I had gotten for our base-wide power outage Friday night - more on that in a moment). Three cheers for scrapbook supplies!

The night before the entire base was without power for a scheduled expansion on the base's electrical system. It was from 10 p.m. (and they weren't kidding about 10 p.m.... the lights went off right at 10) until 8 a.m. Everyone living on base was issued a block of dry ice to put in the refrigerator to keep everything cold. We had an impromptu Cards by Candlelight party at our house. We hadn't planned to be home since we were supposed to catch the Space A flight to Okinawa, but since the plane was overbooked, Rodney, who was on orders, didn't even get on! He ended up getting a flight the following Monday and made it to his seminar with no problem.

Once the power came on Saturday morning, we had a block of dry ice to play with., So, taking an idea from one of our neighbors, we put it in the toilet for a steaming commode. The boys thought that was fun for about 10 minutes.

The kids had been really excited to take a trip this spring break and were disappointed that we didn't get to go to Okinawa (so was I!). So, I quickly put together a road trip to Sasebo navy base, which is about 5 hours away by car, to kind of make up for the disappointment. I'll post about that trip next.