Eleven

The first frame

The 10th of February came and Tom turned 11.  Everyone says it every year about their children - but how time flies.  He is certainly turning into a young man, getting tall (he only just fits under my chin), hormonal attitudes etc but he is still loving and affectionate and good company.

As usual he didn't know what he wanted for his birthday.  Matt and I left it till the last minute and then decided to get him a pool table.  He does like playing pool in pubs and watching snooker with his grandparents, so we figured it would get used.  We got him a 5ft table which fits in the lounge fine and flips up when we need it to so we get our space back.  We also have caved in to peer pressure and got him a phone - when I say got him a phone - we got him a £6 monthly contract on one of our old phones (£6 a month gets him unlimited texts, 1,000 minutes of phone calls and 2GB of data which is way more than he will ever need)  I didn't want him to have a phone until high school - but we discovered that all the boys in his class have one already and he was being left out because of it!  Hate the idea of a phone and mainly social media - but hoping he will be sensible with it and of course we will have every control over it we can.

The gang

Anyway we set up the pool table in the lounge ready so he could play it straight away and wrapped up a chocolate phone and the pool balls.  He got through his presents quite quickly (thank you everyone - thank you cards will be on their way shortly) then we asked him if he was disappointed with what he had got from us - it hadn't registered that we hadn't got him much.  Matt handed over the pool balls and then we said to him to look around the house to see if he could find anything to go with them.  He found it in the lounge (couldn't really hide it!) He was very happy and asked to skive off Boxfit so he could come home and play on it straight from school.  Think I was made to play about 20 games with him!  

We had Japanese curry for tea (after having curry in Settle with Grannie and Grandpa on Sunday and also curry on Saturday with Julie and Kevin!) and then more pool before bed.  

Boy and cake

Tuesday Tom had his party which was the same as previous years - film in the lounge with huge amounts of pop corn followed by burgers and hot dogs and a loud game of hide and seek.  It really is the easiest thing to organise and mostly goes really well.  Tom did cry at one point as he got trampled on during hide and seek - but with 9 boys running around it was going to happen, but of course he isn't used to it being an only child! Tom's cake of choice this year was a Norwegian Flag and troll - nice easy one for change.  

The party ended at 7, then just Ellis was left as there was no-one at home for him, so Tom and he played Monopoly for an hour.

I think he had a good time - but sometimes it really is hard to tell!