Happy Birthday Adrian!

On Friday, June 5, 2009 our oldest boy turned 9 years old! Adrian you are such a joy and a wonderful part of our family. This past year has been such a roller coaster and you have come through it beautifully. You have definitely become more independent and self-sufficient:) Last summer you took your first set of swimming lessons...haven't gotten back into it yet, but we will hopefully get signed up again over the summer! You learned how to ride a bike without training wheels last summer and rode the life out of your bike this year. After a slow and painful death your bike left commission about a month ago. For your birthday all you wanted was a new bike. And so we had to oblige! You have been busy this past year doing your 3rd grade thing as well as scouting and Faith in God. You managed to complete your wolf requirements with a week to spare (my bad...will do better with bear hopefully!) and you got your Faith in God requirements done for the year. Every day I watch you grow and become more of a young man than a boy. I am excited for you to have new experiences, but I sometimes wish we could keep you this age so we don't have to ever deal with teenage issues...lol!

True to our family's core values you chose a Star Wars theme for your birthday party. (Seriously? Where is the creativity in this family?) We decided that this year you could have a party with some of your friends--it was important to you that we have a "boy" party this year. (And so the era of cooties begins...) A few of the neighbor girls tried to crash the party, but true to form the boys made sure that didn't last. Sorry girls, someday the boys will be begging you to come to their parties...give it time! I decided to go for some sort of "mom" award and searched the internet for party ideas. Here is a run down of the days events:

1) make your own light sabers (used foam swim noodles with duct tape for hilts) and have a duel in the back yard. (watch out for the garden...maybe we should have only done that in the front yard?)

2) play a game of Sith tag (kind of got out of hand and then the boys thought it was "lame"...oh well!)

3) eat pizza

4) more light saber duels!!!

5) eat cupcakes (yes, it was supposed to be Darth Maul's light saber...just wish the red food coloring was a bit more vibrant. There was much concern that it was just a little too "pink") and drink "Yoda sodas" (lime sherbet in lime soda...not too bad actually)

6) destroy the death star pinata! (except the string kept breaking so they ended up kicking it around instead...turned out to be a bit more fun that way)

7) open a few presents...thank you!

8) pig out on candy while the boys had a "tournament" of sorts with the Wii "Force Unleashed" Duel mode. Some of those boys are hard core

9) okay ladies...come pick up these crazy boys!

Overall it was a lot of fun and the boys seemed to enjoy themselves. This is probably the last time that I have eight nine-year old boys in my house again though!