Favourites on Friday - A Special Birthday!

Liam turned 18 yesterday!!  I now officially have 2 young men … but they’ll always be ‘my boys’ to me.  Who will never be too old for Lego, it would seem.

Liam doesn’t work on Thursdays, so didn’t have the dilemma of whether or not to take the day off.  Gordon, however, did take the day off so he could spend it with his brother – aww.  

Apart from dinner out with friends, Liam was happy to stay home, immersed in his presents.  As I’d bought Gordon something special for his 18th, I’d asked Liam if there was anything special that he would like; said he could have whatever he liked, within reason.  His birthday list consisted of ‘any Lego Star Wars’ … When he asked if he could have the Lego Avengers Heli-carrier – a rather large bit of Lego – he said it with a grin, believing the answer would be no.  He almost fell over when I said, ‘okay, if that’s what you want.’  The look on his face was priceless!

Left him to cogitate; wanting to keep with the Star Wars theme, he finally decided on ‘The Sandcrawler’ from Episode IV.  He was happy to just have that and nothing else; I had funds put aside for their birthdays, and managed to squeeze in a PS3 game, but couldn’t stretch to anything more.

Gordon bought him a pair of figures, the main characters from one of his most favourite anime, ‘Sword Art Online’:

Even though he knew what he was getting, seeing the box ‘in the flesh’ was mega-exciting!  The weight of the thing … There are more than 16 separate bags of bits, and the instruction booklet is a tome compared to other Lego manuals!  Just as well we hadn’t planned an outing ;)

The icing on his day was dinner out with friends we’ve known since before he was born.  I got to know Jenny when her daughter, Lily, was 14 months old, and Gordon was 8 months.  As sometimes happens, we drifted apart when the kids entered their teen years, but got back in touch earlier this year.  It’s like that time in between never happened :)  Lily’s engaged to be married, and the boys get on like a house on fire with her fiancée – geeks unite!  Liam invited them to join us for his birthday dinner, together with Jenny and her other 2 daughters (younger than the boys), and we had a blast – we laughed so much, I’m surprised we weren’t asked to tone it down.

And it continues – Liam and Gordon are planning a dinner outing next month with their 2 good friends to celebrate his 1h.

Such a lovely day … even having to deal with court papers didn’t tarnish it :)  Oh,  And Liam's nowhere near finishing building the Sandcrawler ;)