Becoming a pirate at seven

Three weeks ago today, on the day of his birthday Joey celebrated his seventh year with a warm second grade welcome in the morning, tasty cupcakes and chocolate chip cookies for his new classmates in the afternoon, and a deliciously moist chocolate cake shared with the family in the evening. That night we had an abundance in two things: 1) noodles for the long life, as the Chinese tradition would suggest, and 2) matchsticks because as usual, the boys had trouble sharing. They each wanted to have their own turn at the cake. I guess they're brothers in more ways than one. In the end, to settle things, they agreed to blow the candles out together.


That weekend we headed down to the historic Annapolis Harbor with a bunch of Joey's friends and sailed away on the Sea Gypsy with the Chesapeake Pirates. And may I say, it was quite an experience! The kids dressed up in colorful stripes and bandanas like real pirates, got their face and arms painted with mustaches and mermaids, learned about the rules at sea, read the map that would lead them to the treasure, received a message in a bottle that warned them about the nastiest of all pirates who was lurking nearby, defeated the evil Pirate Pete with the ship's powerful water cannons, found the sunken treasure and enjoyed the loot and refreshments inside. The smiles on their faces were priceless!


We continued the merriment back at the house with our special seafood dinner: shrimp, crab legs, crab balls, fish, and a lot more. However, we also added some chicken wings for the kids and yet again, more pancit to uphold tradition. The night swung by with the adults' stories and laughter and the kids' screams and yells. We capped the celebration off with Joey blowing out his Cookie Monster cupcake and everyone else singing him a birthday song for one last time.