8 Year Old Boy

Eight years ago today Jackson Walter Fontano was born in Carson City Nevada.  What a wonderful gift and blessing he has been in my life.  Children are such a wonderful thing and I am very grateful to the Lord that I have the opportunity to be the father of three beautiful children.  Jack certainly has made life a great adventure.

This morning he came and sat in the office for a bit while I was getting ready to run.  We talked a little about his birthday and I sang a stirring rendition of Happy Birthday.  He thought it was great - it wasn't all that great but he was all smiles. 

His aunt Clorinda got him a special Alaska shirt that she gave to him last weekend.  He loved it and planned to wear it on his birthday along with a new pair of pants that I picked up for him.  I'm sure there will be holes in the knees of these in no time - it seems par for the course.  Anyhow, he ran off and got all dressed up for school and his big day.  

My kids like to watch the show Cake Boss on occasion.  I don't watch it other then catching parts of episodes they are watching.  Thank you Netflix by the way.  So this show is entertaining but it can be dangerous when your kids start coming up with their own elaborate ideas for their birthday cakes.  When I end up baking a cake for a birthday party I usually get to a point where I am saying to myself never again will I do this.  I would rather just buy the cake and be done with it.  How quickly I tend to forget that.  Jack wanted a Cars 2 cake this year and next year he already has plans for an Angry Bird cake.  Fantastic.  Anyhow we went to the store the other night and were looking at the cakes.  They had some Cars 2 designs and I showed them to Jack hoping we could simply buy one of them and be done.  Nope.  He found this blue cake with green trim that he really wanted.  I was okay with that, you know, it was done, no additional work for me.  Not so fast as Jack then informed me that we would be 'adding jumps and cars flying across the cake...'.  Oh my.

This afternoon I got home with the gifts and the cake.  Yep, the blue one.  Jack came up and together we constructed his cake.  You know that Cake Boss comes in handy because I learned that he uses a lot of rice krispy treats in his construction.  I figured I could make the ramps out of those.  Perfect.  I had picked up Lightning and Francesco so our cake could be authentic Cars 2 material.  Jack was really excited and decided his Finn McMissle needed to be on the cake as well.  We constructed, we frosted, we placed the cars.  Oh, forgot, I wrote Happy Birthday Jack on the cake and pretty much ruined everything.  I picked the wrong frosting for that and didn't realize it until I started.  By that time it was too late, couldn't go back to the store.  The good thing about Jack is that he didn't care. He was way too excited about the rest of it.  Thanks Jack.  Nice design buddy.

Now Andy is my boy that loves to do crafts.  He wanted to be in the middle of it but wanted to construct his own cake.  So I let him have a rice krispy treat to play with.  That turned into two and then three.  I ended up having to assist him in frosting it.  I thought it was done but Andy had to have one more rice krispy treat on it.  I know this sounds pretty exciting and you are probably expecting an intricate carving with fine detail work.  No, it was simply a tower.  He also went with a lovely pink frosting for his tower.  Oh goodness, he was so proud.  Don't be deceived.  This is no ordinary tower.  This is an Angry Birds tower.  

It was a fun day.  We went out to eat at Cafe Rio - Jacks choice and I was quite happy with that choice as it could have very easily involved golden arches.  The fam came over at 8 for cake and ice cream.  Jack wanted to start with presents and wow, he was pretty excited about it.  He has watched these product review videos about different hot wheels toys and has talked about them constantly.  Rachel got him this three lane track that powers the cars around it.  I thought he was going to explode when he saw what it was.   He went nuts.  It was pretty funny.  He also got some wall tracks which he constantly talks about as well and then his new favorite Angry Bird flashlight.  The boy was quite happy.  I let them have a late night playing with the new stuff. 

Anyhow, sure do love Jack.  He is one of my best friends and my fellow Drink from the Sink Club member.  I know, many of you are wondering how you can join such a prestigious club.  It's easy, just drink out of your sink directly.  It will remind you of simpler times and though it isn't filtered or in a cup you will survive.