Dear Amanda,

Hope you are ready for this one. We have MUCH to catch up on. This is clearly out of order, but a lot has happened and we are old now. I tried to send you a damn box today but of course you had to go to London, which is outside of the US and very hard to ship to. Apparently they think I'm going to try to blow up the subway with a box of treats. We are going to try again tomorrow to ship you a box. Otherwise, it will be waiting for you when you get home.

Here is Niko's cozy coupe that he is infatuated with. It has a removable bottom so his feet don't drag right now but he can push it with his feet when he's older. There's also a handle-ish thing in the back so I can push him, which is causing me to have the back of an 80-year old. I had to completely assemble the entire thing because of course it came in a box in pieces, with a piece missing so the steering wheel pulls out if you pull hard enough(which of course he does). I think I may have put the front wheels on backwards also, but it goes so I don't care. The whole car would have fit in a box, I don't understand why they couldn't pre-assemble it.

Moving on to the birthday party... Here was the cake I made him. It's a ship, if you can't tell. And a mighty fine ship if I may say so myself. The unfortunate part was that I made so much other cake that no one ate the ship and it got left outside. It became a rock and then got thrown away. All my hard work. =(

I should have taught Niko how to blow out a candle but our birthday came so fast that I didn't have time. I had to blow it out for him, but he was clearly still thrilled. That was the little cake that I made for him to dig into. He fed me most of what got eaten, but he ate a little bit of it when we gave him a fork. He was overwhelmed with the fact that I was just letting him have at the cake. You could tell that he knew it was wrong.

Nevertheless, there was cake everywhere. He had to have a bath after and the water was all brown and murky from the chocolate frosting all over his body.

Here is the little man the day after pillaging and plundering the house, while stabbing himself with the sword. (He's learning) To this day, he refuses to take off the mardi gras beads. I take them off when he goes to sleep and takes a bath and he gets mad at me. He has them stashed all over the house so he will walk around, find them, and put them on.

Disneyland was SO fun. We are definitely buying annual passes. You need to register and go on your birthday. It's so worth it. Niko loved it. He was definitely overwhelmed and a little bit over-stimulated but that's what Disneyland is all about. He got a lot of buttons that he tried to take off and I got one too that said it was my birthday so that everytime we passed a "Cast Member" they would say "Happy Birthday Becca" and I would be wondering how they knew my name for a few minutes until I remembered my button said my name.

He insisted that we go on the carousel twice. For some reason that was the big hit of the day. I guess I had fun too...

This is Niko looking over the bridge at the Small World boats. He loved Small World and also insisted that we go on that twice. He was so fascinated with the boats and all the little people and animals. It was the first day (by coincidence) of the Christmas decorations at Disneyland, so Small World was all holiday-ish inside. Haunted Mansion was also decorated with Nightmare before Christmas stuff, which bothers me but the ride was still fun. We definitely didn't take Niko on that one.

Hopefully you made it to the end. And hopefully your box comes soon. I doubt it though...I guess it has a long way to travel. We miss you. Come home soon and do fun things with us. Stop prancing around Europe and making me jealous.

Postmarked 10:19 p.m.