Quinn’s 7th Birthday!!!

This past January, Quinn turned 7!!! It is hard for us to believe that the time has flown by this fast!! As you may have noticed, Quinn is very much into Star Wars this past Christmas, so it was the obvious choice for his birthday theme. The day that we celebrated his birthday, I took him to Party City to pick out his balloon. The only Star Wars balloons that they had were Darth Vader. He said to me that he wanted a Star Wars theme for his birthday but was concerned about having a balloon with “the bad guy” from the movie on it. I was so proud of him at this moment. I was unsure what to do but decided that if he was old enough to come to that conclusion about his balloon above his want for a balloon then I was going to trust him. I asked him if he wanted to be a bad guy and he said no. I asked him if he thought that the things that Darth Vader did and the way he treated people in the movies were things that God would want us to do and he said no. I also asked him if the things in the movies were real and he said that they were people dressed up and pretending. With this understanding between us, I did let him pick out one of these balloons. We find that with all the “good guys” in these movies that all the themed birthday items that we were looking for (balloon, cake candle and card) were of Darth Vader. Yes, I know that in the end he turned good for like 10 seconds before he kicks it but the message of “do as you please until the end and only then make a change” is not something/someone we are comfortable with. We allowed the balloon and the Darth Vader candle only because we know Quinn well enough to understand how he feels about these things and we probably talk him to death about right from wrong. So, as you will see I made Quinn a Caramel Cake and placed his Darth Vader candle on top. When asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner he said hot dogs (like last year), brussel sprouts, and sweet potatoes! We got him a new Star Wars metal lunch box (which have "the good guys" on it) to put his crayons in, new shoes, a video game and a new Hot Wheels Trick Track. Now that this birthday has long since gone, I can’t help but remember the other themes we have been through...one was Pooh, two was Blues Clues, three was Thomas, four was Cars/The Incredibles, five was Spider-Man and six was Wall-E. I wonder what theme it will be next year…

-A