Jamie’s party was the middle of last month, but I’m just getting through the photos… there were a lot of kids.

No, really… A LOT of kids:

I think all parents loved us. We held it from 5pm-7pm, so it was perfect for them to drop their kid and go out to dinner. *laugh*

Jamie thought it was pretty cool though:

All the boys were running around like crazy (it was a costume party obviously) and at one point guarded the fort:

The girls decided to stay away from that craziness:

You can just see them saying “boys are SO weird”:

… and the obligatory candle pic:

I think Tom and I basically passed out that night… crazy! But it’s what Jamie asked for and they all had a great time!

Yes, I’m behind a bit. Whatever.

A new Wimpy Kid came out several days before his birthday. We did everything we could to keep him from finding out, including guiding him away from displays at Barnes & Noble. I also had him convinced he was getting just clothes since he was getting so many other gifts. Cassie even got into it and told him we just got him clothes. Surprise!

Cassie’s party this year was a tea party. We had a hard time finding hats and stuff, so we ended up getting lots of feathery looking stuff. (Tom and I think it was more of a pimp party, but hey… whatever… the girls liked it!)

Blowing out the candle…

The girls made necklaces with beads. I was impressed that many of them stuck with it until they got their necklace done.

They escaped outside to play for a while… Cassie scored a swing…

Tom’s fort held up well to all the fun!

I also realized I didn’t get a good picture of the cake other than this phone picture

…but Jamie got some video… All camera work is the will of the budding 8 year old filmographer. *head rush*

Because Cassie’s birthday (yes, I know I’m like 2 months late posting, thanks for reminding me that suck) fell on a Wednesday this year, we had a little family celebration on the day and her party that weekend…

We gave her a tea set and because we are a family of geeks, the kids immediate put a penny in the sugar bowl. I wonder how many people will understand why… I’ll share after the photo…

There’s a book called A Bargain for Frances that we all love. In the book, Francis gets swindled out of her tea set by her friend, but tricks the friend into taking it back by putting a penny in the sugar bowl and telling the friend something was in there, so the friend naturally wants HER tea set back. A trick yes, but well, the friend was tricking her first. Anyway… I thought it was sweet…

Here she is opening her gift and having her first tea party with her brother. I must also say that Jamie was a prince this night… he was such a good sport!

Earlier this year, my dear friend Crystal had THE birthday EVENT of the year for her oldest daughter. It was a rock band party. And we had a photo shoot. Oh yes. The girl band attitude was in full effect, people! Photos below…

I must also say that us adult girls had a great time too. She sent the husband and son out of the house for the night. We got the kids settled and we had a few drinks I ended up crashing on the sofa and we threw food at them in the morning until their moms came and got them. It was great fun, as you’ll see below…

Cassie LOVED this guitar. She had a great time playing with it.

Ah, here they are… Courtney, Alanis and Pink…

(Tom’s birthday is in January, I’m just really behind on posting stuff!)

He had a trip out of town and I didn’t want him to have to take the boat anchor laptop, so I got him a netbook eeePC, but I got his friend to have him meet him for lunch and I was there to surprise him. Tom was SO clueless. I walked up, he saw me and assumed I just happened to be there for lunch for no apparent reason. Yes, Tom, I regularly go 20 minutes away for lunch on random Thursdays. *laugh* I am not even sure he “got it” when I brought out the wrapped gifts. It was several days in advance, but still! It was HILARIOUS!

After the park party (yesterday’s post)… we headed home. I invited a few people back for pizza and even more cake, and of course to kick off the “real” birthday party – Halo night with his best friend!

Shout out to Kelly at Sweet Austin – http://www.sweetaustin.com – who made the cake – she rocks!

Here’s Jamie (now 8 years old!) with his Halo Master Chief cake

Here are some of the kiddos eating pizza and being super silly

And, of course, singing happy birthday with yet another cake

So, Jamie had TWO parties. Let me explain…

So, Jamie wanted to have a Halo party, have a few boys spend the night, play Halo and have pizza. Halo is a game that Jamie plays on the Xbox. We only let him play the first one because I think the other two are too bloody. And the kid can’t even get past the first mission, so he doesn’t really see anything “good” anyway. I’m kind of a crazy person about stuff like that, but I agreed. I told him that one or two might have a problem with the Halo thing, but he wanted to do it, so off we went.

Well, only 1 kid could come. The parents said it was because they didn’t let their 7-8 year old spend the night or spend the night with more than one kid, but I overheard later that the two kids that couldn’t come for that reason were having a sleepover themselves. Gah, I hope Jamie doesn’t get wind of that – I’m sure it would hurt his feelings. I wish the parents had planned it another night or been truthful if it was the Halo thing. Because that will end up with my kid having his feelings hurt or thinking I’m a liar. It mainly bugs me because I was VERY careful not to tell their children about the Halo party directly – I emailed the parent the details, with screenshots of the game and all kinds of stuff. Sigh, sometimes I can’t win. Oh well, I can’t control the world, right? And I’m sure they meant no harm, but still… oh well, my blood pressure requires that I let it all go… *laugh* At the end of the day, it ended up not mattering anyway.

ANYWAY, the kid that could come was his best friend, so that worked out fine. In the meantime, he was upset that no one was coming to his party. So, we pulled together a quick after school party… with the theme of PENGUIN! Surely no one can find fault with a cute little penguin! (Plus we love Tux around here!) Heh, okay, the theme went as far as the invitations and a stuffed penguin on the table. I think the fruit snacks had a penguin in them maybe.

So, pictures from the park today and pictures from Halo night later…

He was a little grumpy and we had to pull him out for a few minutes. I made the mistake of giving the kids blow outs and they were driving him crazy. We had about 12-15 kids show up at this one

He perked up when it was cake time! Heh, I caught the smoke from the candle being blow out *dork*

He got even happier when it was present time (notice the blow outs all around him?)

My little boy is eight today. That right, today is Jamie’s birthday. He’s 8 years old. 2nd grade, baby!

Jamie was such a beautiful baby. I may be a little biased, but I think he was gorgeous.

Now, wow. He is an amazing kid. He is so smart, so wonderful in math, can read at a 4th grade level, just amazing. I love watching his mind work. But, Jamie is more than that. Jamie is very sensitive, he is loving, always ready with a hug. He’s very empathic. He seems to really care about other people. Don’t get me wrong, we have our moments, but he really is an amazing kid. If you are feeling sad, he knows it, and he’ll go out of his way to make you feel better. Definitely our little sweet heart.

Happy Birthday, little man. And thank you. Thank you for being such a cool kid.

.

So… Jamie’s birthday is coming up in 10 days! WooHoo! He will be EIGHT! Yes, we gave him his gift early. He’s been BEGGING for a bunk bed for forever. He wants to be able to have his friends over and have a place to sit and for them to sleepover. We found this bunk with a futon and he fell in love with it. We found it for a GREAT price so went ahead and bought it. He’s in heaven.

This is the video where he first saw it. He knew we had gotten it, but we told him we weren’t going to put it up until the weekend or his birthday. Then Tom spent the morning putting it together. When he came home, we told him he was in trouble and needed to go to his room immediately and we’d be in there in a few minutes – I had the camera in there waiting to get his reaction. Yes, I realize I had the camera sideways at first. I didn’t even think about. Just deal with it.

This is them later after they got up there… now they go up and down with no big deal – and no, we didn’t leave them in there alone – but we did think about it

Favorite line? “That doesn’t look like a ladder. That looks like death!”