Austin's 8th Birthday!!

Austin got this binky b/c he hates to sleep in his own bed. (See picture below).
By the way, some people in our family say they just can't remember the name Sniper or "he just doesn't look like a Sniper!" So...sadly, his name might be changed to...Beau. Beau! I will only say that the person that is in love with this name is 42 years old and is a pastor.
Anyways, the name in itself is fine, but we tend to shorten our pets' names. And they turn out to be not so cute. For example, Ranger got stuck with "Rangy" Mattie is 'Brattie Mattie' and 'Stinky' and 'Suspicia', and worst of all, Dumplin' was dubbed "Dumpy". So we will butcher "Beau" into Bobo, Boey, Bo-bee...and if you use your imagination, you will realize that it only gets worse from there. That is why--in my esteemed opinion--Sniper should remain as Snipey. As you can see from the previous nicknames, things could be worse.
However, some people just do not appreciate my hindsight or foresight.


Anyways...back to the reason for this post...
When Austin blew out his candles he got this anguished look on this face and said, "I don't want to do the other one!"
To which all all responded in unison, "Huh??"
So he said, "YOU know...Biting the cake..."
Since he had so graciously reminded us, we started chanting, "MORDIDA!! MORDIDA!! MORDIDA!!" Which means, "Take a bite!"
It is a Mexican tradition that the birthday-EE has to take a bite out of the cake, and the birthday-ERS must violently smash his/her head into the cake with the intention of blinding them and filling their nostrils and eye sockets with frosting and cake. I've been the victim and the victimizer. Unfortunately, the only way we could get Austin to do the Mordida was to promise him that no one would touch him. So I only got to push up on the cake which got a little of his slobber on the cake. That was a bummer. We wanted to see some action!!



Gramma got him some really cool spy gear that wakes us up in the middle of the night.


"I get to open a present!!!!!!"