Greetings to everyone.

Today, Xavier turned eight years old. Where has the time gone?

Xavier has been anticipating his birthday and his party, which is this coming Saturday. A few weeks back, Xavier came home from school, gathered up markers and some construction paper, and started writing out invitations to give to his friends at school.

Apparently, in his mind, Rebecca was not moving fast enough in getting the invitations out. I think Xavier was concerned no one was going to know about his party, and he really wanted his friends to come over.

Well, the invitations did go out. It took some time this year, but many at last responded. Looks in the neighborhood of about nine kids. That will make for a nice party.

A few days ago, Xavier mentioned opening his presents. All the ones from family have been sitting on the hearth and wrapped these past several days.

"You'll have to wait until Saturday," I teased him.

At this point Xavier informed me with some unshakable confidence that he gets to open presents from family on his birthday.

Of course, that is what we did, though he had to wait until after super (of which he had to eat it all).

His Aunt Kathy flew in from Phoenix as part of his birthday. She is here a week, which tickles Xavier no end. She arrived Tuesday, and really was his first present. He has looked forward to her arrival for months.

After dinner, we headed out to open presents. Xavier was excited.

A few weeks ago, Xavier spent the afternoon with friends. One of the boys introduced him to Battleship Advanced, an electronic variant of the classic game Battleship. Xavier wanted one badly, and we heard about it frequently these past few weeks.

Perhaps someone will give it to you for your birthday, we often answered. And, sure enough, Grandma Penny did. (I wonder how she knew).

He was elated when he opened that gift, the first he opened. Rebecca and I thought (erroneously it turns out) that the later gifts would eclipse the Battleship game.

This year, we thought our "themed" gifts would beat any gift from others. Several of the family coordinated various Estes Rocket items. Rebecca and I got several items and both grandpas provided other items, ending up with Xavier having everything he needed to enjoy launching a rocket.

I introduced him to the idea of rockets several months ago. We watched them on YouTube videos, and Xavier got really excited about them. "I want to get one of those!" he informed me with dilated pupils and and ear to ear grin.

Bingo I thought. Birthday presents.

We saved the rockets to the end. The gifts were staged to build up to the big rocket kit. He opened the package with the glues, wadding and engines first (after all, some assembly is required). The idea was to get him to anticipate what might be in that "last package."

The next package was the remote launcher, followed by the launch pad, followed at last by the "big" rocket.

Alas, though excited by them, they did not eclipse the Battleship Advanced game. In fact, after opening everything, he spent the rest of the evening setting up and playing Battleship.

We'll see if Battleship still holds its own against the rockets once he launches one of his rockets!

Xavier's official cake is still in pieces and will be assembled and presented Saturday at his party.

However, we still bought a small cake to celebrate with him tonight. After the presents were opened, and we pulled him away from Battleship, we sang Happy Birthday and let him blow out his eight candles.

With all the crazy this past year, his official cake will have a sparkler on it rather than him blowing out candles on it. That, we think, will alleviate any concerns parents might have of having cake slices get "infected" with the virus.

Tonight's cake was the cake he could spread his birthday spittle across as he blew out his candles in the traditional manner.

The Lord is Risen!

This morning began early. Not because Xavier rose before the sun (he, in fact, had to be awakened), but because we had to be at church at 0730.

Rebecca spent part of her week preparing snacks and a light breakfast spread for the pastors and workers at the church. They had four services to get through this morning and little time to eat in between.

After his head cleared of the grogginess of being awakened before 0600, Xavier found his Easter basket on the dining table.

He was at first concerned. He left it in the hallway outside his room before going to bed. But when he left his room in the morning, it was not there.

After going through all that the Easter Bunny had filled his basket with (thank you Aunt Chelle for the basket, he used the basket you gave him yesterday), it was time for the hunt. He had only about 20 minutes, so it was off to the races.

However, with Xavier, there was no real concept of a rush to find the booty hidden around the house.

His method of searching was to look for anything in front of him. Looking behind or under did not often occur to him.

He did remember that the Bunny hid stuff under the leather cushions of the couches last year, and so looked there.

He was not disappointed.

Rebecca and I discussed how we remember racing into a room and grabbing as much as we could find. We looked behind, up, down and under after snatching up the obvious.

We decided the difference between Xavier's hunting style and our childhood style is, in part, due to lack of competition. Both Rebecca and I had a sister to compete against.

Xavier made several passes through the upstairs rooms. During his initial pass, he found the obviously placed goodies. Dad and Mom had to coach him to look in other places.

In some cases, the game of Hot/Cold was used to guide Xavier to find a prize.

This year, instead of leaving his Easter basket in his room, the Bunny left it on the dining room table. But, this year, the Bunny hid a number of items in Xavier's room. This fact did not escape Xavier's notice, and he commented on the difference.

By the time Xavier needed to get cleaned up, eat breakfast and get dressed, he had found most of the goodies.

We all put extra effort into dressing for church this morning. With Church baskets loaded, we all headed out to the early (and first) Easter service.

Christ is Risen!

Greetings to everyone.

The weather prognosticators said it would hit Thursday night. As Thursday approached, the warnings changed to Friday, then to Saturday, then to late Sunday morning.

Saturday had nothing more than a light dusting of snow, though an hour north 12 inches had fallen by the afternoon.

Sunday morning came, but any snow on its way to South Denver did not seem concerned by any of the weather alerts. We did not go to church; in fact, the church sent out notification that it was not going to open due to the weather, weather as yet unseen.

About ten o'clock the snow started falling, by ten-thirty we had at least an inch on the ground. Finally, some snow.

There was some wind with the snow, and we had large drifts measuring in excess of four feet when the day had ended and the snow tapered to a fine powder falling from the skies.

Xavier spent several hours outside in the snow, on and off. The snow was just a little too dry to pack. Neither he nor I shoveled snow; there did not seem to be a point until 7:00 PM ish, but then it was too dark to do anything.

Jeffco Schools announced a remote learning day for Monday. While Xavier fixed breakfast, I broke out the snow thrower. After breakfast, Xavier Zoomed in to class and I came in three and a half hours later, after 4 driveways and all the connecting sidewalks. The average depth of non-drifted snow was about twenty-one inches.

Xavier and Rebecca went sledding in the afternoon after school and lunch (his school day was shortened and Xavier finished his work before lunch).

Tuesday, Jeffco also declared a remote learning day. Again, Xavier finished his work early. We had lunch, then went outside to build an igloo.

I had told him of how my dad helped us build an igloo back when I was about Xavier's age. That storm dropped forty-six inches of snow. The story of the igloo inspired Xavier, so out we went.

"My mission is not to go inside until I complete the igloo."

We got one and a half rows of "blocks" (more cylinders/cores as we were using a five gallon bucket to make bricks). Xavier, sitting in the snow, decided the igloo was too much work. He wanted just to make a fort and what we had looked good enough.

I asked him what happened to his mission. He made his proclamation with such assured conviction. He then decided he wanted to go inside and rest for an hour.

I told him if he did that, he would never finish the igloo. So, we added another one and a half rows to the wall. We even had a tunnel to crawl through to get inside.

At this point, Xavier had enough building. It was snowball fight time. As I had several unplaced blocks staged, we decided to put them up before the fight.

As Xavier looked over the structure, and especially at the entrance, he decided it looked like an ancient ruin (interestingly, ruins as in from the ruins left behind by the Ancients in Starget SG-1).

With that observation, we stacked the last of the blocks to make it look more like ruins. We even made a fallen column.

We decided Xavier won the snowball fight and we went in to warm up.

Wednesday, Rebecca and Xavier went out after dinner and had a snowball fight and built up the rest of the wall.