Xavier's Birthday & the continuing pizza saga

Where does the time go?  Our sweet, hilarious, full of zest boy is 6 today!!!  Crazy....

Parties gone Ukrainian: Same as at home, we had several celebrations - party with friends, family party & in-class celebration.  Key difference was with the party with friends.  While the Western kids generally showed up with their parents, the local kids were a different story.  Most were dropped off by the family's driver....came bearing HUGE gifts (seriously - Santa Claus level).   A set of triplet girls came bearing their own nanny.  I'll take 3 more girls over here with a nanny any day!  


The kids had a great time swimming - but I overestimated the amount of their attention it would hold.  Once the kids got bored things eventually deteriorated into WWF like.  Can you spot the Marine dad below?  He became the bottom of a serious dog pile.....

Lego Love: Xavier was in heaven with the plethora of gifts - especially anything Lego.  Quincy was pretty happy too as anything Xavier got he negotiated the chance to 'help' build parts of it.

For our family dinner, Xavier selected noodles.......

Who screws up pizza?!:  For his actual birthday meal, he selected pepperoni pizza.  Given my challenges with delivery pizza to date, I decided to put matters into more reliable hands.  Asked the guy we hired to help pay bills (highly complicated around here) and do errands to order my pizza for me.  As a native speaker, I thought this was my 'shoe in' way to get a pepperoni pizza without any other random ingredients Eastern Europeans deem acceptable, but Western kids clearly do NOT (corn, peppers, stinky cheese).  


...BUT, just to make sure there was no miscommunication, I printed the menu, circled the items I wanted and gave it to him.  Phew!  Proud of my ingenuity, I kicked back, enjoyed my glass of wine while the kids played with the new Lego's and we all anticipated our pizza...


90 minutes later, errand guy returns...with aforementioned delivery pizza.....????

......oh no, with a bag of random groceries - including frozen pizza (yes - corn & peppers and all!)


Given it was already 6:20, we went with reheated leftover pizza and then I attempted to overcompensate for the lame birthday dinner with a 'dessert trifecta'....

.....hot fudge sundaes, chocolate chip cookies (consumed, not pictured) & cupcakes... this one decorated by Quincy for his brother....

The kids seemed totally happy - making me believe that sugar really can solve most all problems.

I plan to dedicate my entire next Russian lesson to ordering delivery.

Here's to Xavier & sweetness!