Tanner turned SEVEN on Thursday, June 28, 2018. Between having the Zavoral grandparents, Uncle Matt, a little league baseball game, and an Odd Squad party with friends, Tanner had a very "odd"-some birthday!
Grandma and Grandpa Zavoral showed up just in time for a birthday dinner at Tanner's choice restaurant, McDonalds. Uncle Matt was with us too! Tanner was in heaven.
Then we headed to his baseball game. Everyone was so excited!
Grandpa was very proud of his grandson!
Three generations of baseball lovers.
Tough guys.
At home that evening, we lit up our rhubarb crumble for Tanner to blow out seven candles.
The next day was Friday, party day! Tanner began planning the party and his birthday servce project months ahead of time. We decided to try making an Odd Squad Party since he loves the TV show Odd Squad on PBSkids. Tanner made this sign all by himself! He cut out the letters from the blue to make negative space and then glued it on a red background. I helped him hang it up.
For his birthday service project, Tanner decided to collect books from his own library and from all his friends. He wanted to give them to places in town that needed books. We spent several days going shelf by shelf through our home-library to select books that we didn't need or that were duplicates of what we already had. Some books that Tanner chose to give away were brand new and others were well loved. He made this table for the party where books could be placed in leau of presents. His friends were so generous with bringing books to donate! We ended up collecting over 110 books!
We were able to make odd squad badges for all the "agents."
We had almost everything ready, with 40 minutes to spare. Then Tanner checked to make sure we had birthday hats. I had completely forgotten about birthday hats, they aren't really on my radar anymore since my kids in recent years complain about them hurting and not staying on. Tanner was pretty upset and anxious about it. So grandpa jumped right up and said "Let's go to the store and get some!" That sure was nice of him!
When the kids arrived, we watched Odd Squad, mostly to help the kids that have never seen the show, so that they could understand what our party was all about.
Jeremy was a huge help to our friends.
Then we made Odd Squad gadgets. Gadgets are any kind of device that an agent can use to solve cases of oddness and to fight off odd villains. This activity was a big hit, and probably Tanner's favorite part of the party! I brought out all kinds of art supplies from the garage, including old juice containers, cardboard, tin caps, jewels, bottle caps, colored paper, piped wire and sticky foam. We had three hot-glue stations to keep things moving along. The kids--er, I mean, agents-- were really creative, and everyone was able to complete their project.
While the agents made their gadgets, I told them that there were reports of some villains on the loose, including Sassy Grassy, who likes to steel things and hide them in grass, and Lazer Blazer who likes to annoy people with his lazer gun and protect all his posessions with lazer beams.
Our little ODD SQUAD
Special note for Tanner when he's older: The subsequent events during the party were created by your mother, including the creation of the villains and their evil motives. It was very fun to put these odd cases together for you!
As we got ready to test our gadgets outside, we noticed that something VERY ODD happened! All of our shoes were gone!! The person that took them left behind a bunch of grass on the porch. We figured it must be the villain Sassy Grassy. We went looking around in the grass for clues! The kids were flipping out with excitement!
We kept finding shoes laying everywhere, and we noticed that they were layed out in groups of seven. Hmmm, that's odd! But even odder was how we could not find all the shoes! After scraping through all the lawn around the house, we determined that most of the shoes were still missing!
Then we spotted her. Sassy Grassy was trying to get away with the rest of our shoes!! (Oddly enough, she looked a lot like Gramma Z!)
All the agents tried to use their gadgets on her. Tanner yelled some ideas, and since no one could hear him, he had a meltdown (which I had anticipated). It took a few minutes, but we were able to get everyone to listen to both Sassy and Tanner. He made Sassy Grassy freeze with his special freezing gadget, and all the agents ordered Sassy to give us the rest of our shoes. She said that she locked them in her car, and the only way we could get them was to open her lockbox that contained her car keys. She said the code was 3 numbers that add up to seven, so she was sure we would never figure it out.
Well, we had very smart agents, and we had notes from our investigation! The shoes she put in the grass were laid out in groups that added up to seven, so we just tried those numbers combinations, and one of them worked!! The agents opened the lockbox, got the keys, and were able to get our shoes from the car. Sassy Grassy slinked away, very upset! We all came inside, tired and hot, since it was 93 degrees out. Just as I hoped, all the odd squad agents said they wanted juice boxes to drink. (The lead agent in the TV show loves juice boxes).
I tried to find the stash of juice boxes that I had bought for the party, but they were missing! This was very odd. Alainea said she saw someone take the juice boxes, but there was flashing lights and lazers everywhere, so she couldn't tell who it was. She saw the lazers got into the basement. Everyone freaked out! "It's LAZER BLAZER, get your gadgets, hurry, hurry!!" Tanner could hardly wait for everyone to join him as he went down to investigate the basement. At the bottom of the stairs we found the villain standing in front of a giant lazer trap!! On the other side of the trap were our juice boxes! The kids were screaming with excitement and tried to use their gadgets to make Lazer Blazer go away.
I tried to find the stash of juice boxes that I had bought for the party, but they were missing! This was very odd. Alainea said she saw someone take the juice boxes, but there was flashing lights and lazers everywhere, so she couldn't tell who it was. She saw the lazers got into the basement. Everyone freaked out! "It's LAZER BLAZER, get your gadgets, hurry, hurry!!" Tanner could hardly wait for everyone to join him as he went down to investigate the basement. At the bottom of the stairs we found the villain standing in front of a giant lazer trap!! On the other side of the trap were our juice boxes! The kids were screaming with excitement and tried to use their gadgets to make Lazer Blazer go away.
It took a few minutes to calm everyone down and dry some birthday tears so that we could hear the villain speak. Lazer Blazer, who oddly looked a lot like Grandpa Z, said that he was going to drink all of our juice boxes. The kids yelled, "Nooooo!" The villain explained that the only way through the lazers is to sneak through openings that form the same shape as a juice box- rectangles. He was sure that none of us could do that. After we fixed the lazers that zapped some kids for going in too soon, we let each agent take their turn going through the trap as carefully as they could. Tanner went through first to show the way through all the rectangle openings. He had fun drinking juice boxes while his friends came through to join him. Lazer Blazer was pretty bummed that a bunch of kid-agents got into his lair. Since his lazers couldn't stop them, he told the kids to use their gadgets to destroy the lazers. As you can guess, the children had a lot of fun doing that!!
Then it was time to celebrate their success in defeating the villains with juice boxes and ice-cream-cake!! Everyone got to drink at least three juice boxes, so that was cool. The cake said, "7 is odd, happy birth-odd-day Tanner!"
When we sang "happy birthday" to Tanner, people wore the hats and held the noise makers that Grandpa got. I told the kids to wait until the end of the song to blow on their noise makers, and as soon as we sang the last note, the kids blew those suckers as loud as they could!! It was really funny because we decided not to tell them to stop. They just kept blowing and blowing and blowing until their own little ears couldn't stand it. Everyone got a great laugh out of that!
Tanner and the kids loved the ice-cream-cake. While eating, they had a good time visiting. Then, some played in the basement and some watched more Odd Squad shows until their parents came to get them. OOFTA! We were all pooped by the time everyone left!
Tanner's party was also goodbye time to these good friends. They had to move out of state the next day. We sure miss them!
In the days following, Tanner and I sorted and delivered all the books that he collected. The places he chose to donate included: the Hormel Historic Home, Spam Museum Book Knook, Rachel's Hope, the sharing libraries outside of three schools (Woodson Kindergarten Center, Sumner Elementary and the Community Learning Center), the Reader's Cafe at the summer school lunchroom, and a friend with many needs that doesn't have books at home.
It was a joy to see Tanner think carefully through which books should go to which location, and to see his eyes light up with excitement at each delivery. At the Spam Museum, Tanner told the worker in the most polite voice he had, "Um, it's my birthday, and I want to give you these books because I noticed some of the ones you have are kind of damaged. And I chose farm and pig books for you since this is the Spam Museum." The Spambassadors were really excited about this and Tanner left the place beaming. :)
When we gave away the last batch of books, Tanner enthusiastically suggested, "Now let's find MORE books to give away!"
During this past year, Tanner grew more than 3 inches, and is now wearing 7/8 clothes and size 1 shoes. He also grew in other ways, like learning how to read, make new friends and play lots of songs by ear on the piano. He got better at doing chores like vacuuming, scrubbing toilets and rotating laundry. While Alainea was with us throughout the year, Tanner experienced what it's like to have an older sibling. He went on his first trip outside of the USA to Costa Rica and learned to speak some Spanish phrases.
Throughout the year, he went from loving Ninja Turtles to loving Odd Squad and Wild Kratts. Tanner continues to love all sports, science, and art (esp drawing). He still keeps busy by building his own creations out of legos, paper, sand, wood, music, and pretty much any odds-and-ends he can find. He likes spending time talking to us, thinking of gifts for us and others and planning activities for us to do together. He continues to have an impecable memory. This year, he has gotten really good at arguing a point of thought and shows quite a competative streak at times. He still loves to dance, and has some pretty silly and cool moves.
Tanner has grown in his spirituality, too. While he doesn't always love church, he loves learning stories and lessons from the Bible and Book of Mormon. His prayers are always very thoughtful, and he often prays on his own. He likes talking about deep doctrine and asks questions about the gospel that I didn't ask until I was a teenager. He has started reading the scriptures on his own and is excited about preparing to be baptised. I hope he will come to know more this year how much Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love him.
Tanner has made a lot of progress this year with his therapist to tackle his anxieties. As a family we are always learning new ways to help him (and each other) deal with anxiety. Tanner acts like any other kid when he is well-fed, well-rested and nothing changes in "the plan" for the day. When those things are not all in place, it doesn't take much to trigger a meltdown or panic attack, and the struggle is very real for him (and us!). We've found that social stories, breathing, talking through his worries, helping him dispel lies that his brain tries to tell him, and helping him filter through his postive and negative thoughts have been really powerful tools for him. Tanner also benefits from our weighted blanket and trampoline, body squishes, magnesium supplements, and vitamin D supplements. From time to time, he will actually lay down for a rest with the vibrating snake, but this is rare since relaxing does not come easy for him one bit. For a few days, he felt like his 7th birthday was the worst day of his life because of the couple times where no one could hear him when solving the cases. I did a "filtering our thoughts" activity with him, and that helped Tanner remember all the awesome things that happened during his party.
Tanner is a wonderful blessing in our lives. He is a thinker, creator, and a natural leader. He is passionate about many, many things in life. Best of all, he is MY son!
