Cinco de Mayo....

...also happens to be Mikey's birthday! He's 26 years old. 

He's been wanting the board game Civilization forever. Really really wanting it. I ordered it online for a Christmas gift (something I never, ever do because I'm so afraid of getting scammed) only to find out I ordered the wrong edition. 

Serves me right for thinking I could do online shopping. 

We sold the "wrong" Civilization to someone on Ebay and I told Mikey, I would get him the "right" edition for his birthday. He's been counting down the days. 

It's a pretty expensive game (although we found a steal of a deal) so we agreed to have it be a birthday-Mother's Day-Father's Day gift. 

Mikey spent a week leading up to his birthday reading the extensive rule book (28 pages) so that he would be ready to go when it arrived. 

I wasn't looking forward to it as much as he was because from his research we discovered it takes anywhere from 2-6 hours to play. 

Shoot me now. 

It finally came in the mail (on his birthday too!) and Mikey immediately started rereading and highlighting the rule book. 

(Wouldn't it be great if this much effort went into his Sunday school lessons? 

I joke, he always does a really good job on his lessons.)

He had to wait all day to play it because I refused to start it until Mabin was in bed for the night.

In the meantime he made some delicious ribs for his birthday dinner. 

So nice that he likes to cook, even on his birthday. 

And we had his friend, Jackson over to eat it with us. 

It was a very chill celebration, which is just what Mikey likes. He would kill me if I ever tried to throw him a surprise party. 

After everything was cleaned up, Mabes bathed and in bed, we started the game. 

We played 2 hours Saturday night, 2 hours Sunday and finally, finally! finished it after playing a few more hours on Monday.

At first I really did want to die, it was confusing and took us forever because there are so many rules and even though Mikey had read over them we still had to look everything up. 

But then we started to get the hang of it and guess what......I won!!!!!!!!! 

I felt kind of bad because he had been obsessing over this game for half a year. But not too bad :)

 It was really a fluke that I won and even if I had wanted to be nice and "let" Mikey win I wouldn't have known how to do it. That's how intense it is. 

Moral of the story: 

I love Mikey and will play 6+ hour games with him anytime because we have so much fun together. 

And I really do like the game now, we'll see if we can talk anyone else into playing it with us. 

And I love how obsessed and excited Mikey gets about stuff. 

It's adorable. 

And I'll willingly give up my Mother's Day gifts if one gift makes Mikey this happy. 

He's so amazing, can't wait to celebrate many, many more birthdays with him.

(And can't wait to see what he gets enthralled with next!)