Tom's Birthday

Tom's birthday was last Sunday. He turned the big four, but he is already saying that he is "four and a quarter" - always wanting to be older and bigger. The sepia toned scrap page is a letter to Tom. I saw this idea - to write a letter to each child on their birthday, and thought it was a good idea. Tom is the first one I have done this for, but I hope to do it for each of my children each year.
Tom was so cute - he was so excited about everything. He loved the cake that I made for him - a tractor-dirt cake, every boy's dream cake. His response was "that's the cake I always wanted". This is my first time being creative with a birthday cake. The reason I did it is because the kids always see the cakes at the grocery store and look at all of them, trying to decide which one they would want for their birthday, but I just refuse to pay so much for a cake. The dirt cake was easy, I just crumbled up some cookies and put it on top and then added the little tractors I got at the $1 store. The other thing Tom got really excited about was the pack of gum he got as one of his gifts - he hugged it when he opened it. Tom is funny with gum. He chews one piece of gum for about 5 minutes, then adds another piece, then another, maybe throws away the big wad and withing in 1 hour has consumed all his gum. Of course, he did share some with Charlie, but I was still surprised at how quickly they went through all 5 packs of gum.
Since Tom's birthday was on a Sunday we did some stuff on Saturday to celebrate - mostly at Charlie's request. He said that we couldn't do anything fun on Sunday for Tom's birthday so we needed to do it on Saturday. Tom chose to go to a movie. Jeremy took the boys to "Wall E". I didn't go because I knew Becca wouldn't sit through 5 minutes of it, so there was no need to even try, so we went gift shopping and then made Tom's cake.
The reason it says "Chuck E Cheese" on the bottom of Tom's birthday letter as one of the names that he is called is because he insists on us calling him Chuck E Cheese. I'm not sure why this started, but one day he announced that his name was now Chuck E Cheese and periodically this is the only thing he responds to. He is always asking me how to spell it and now when he spells it on his own he says "c h u c k e e s e" and thinks he spelled the whole word.