The Day You Turned Eight

Calen is eight. 

EIGHT!!!

I'm pretty certain him turning 8 is illegal somewhere. Like some sort of time traveling violation because we just brought him home from the hospital like, last week and there's no way that eight years have passed. 

Besides, I'm obviously not old enough to have an 8 year old. 

Calen's party was actually yesterday. Actually, he had two parties. One was last week during an impromptu 4 day visit to Washington (don't hate me, you guys. We had some family stuff to deal with and didn't tell anyone we were in town) with his best friend at a trampoline park and then Red Robin for dinner, followed by a joint birthday cake for him and his cousin that are a week apart. 

Celebrating spring birthdays! Calen and Brooks in March, Cam in April

Birthday celebrations with Calen's best friend Cameron

Recreating a scene that happened at Calen's first birthday, when Cameron came over and stole birthday cake and then Calen fed him chunks of cake with his hands (but, we used forks this time. Because obviously)

Okay, back to yesterday. 

Calen got to pick three friends to meet up at (yet another) trampoline park and arcade, play for an hour and a half, then go to Mary's Pizza for a rowdy dinner involving six boys, a half ton of breadsticks and a Pokemon cake. Super fun and we left a very large tip. 

Today we kept to our family birthday traditions. 

(note, I've done four of these "The Day You Turned" now with Calen. Here's when he turned three, four, and seven). 

We started with birthday pancakes, which are regular pancakes except birthday'd with whipped cream, sprinkles and a number candle, and comes with free terrible singing rendition of "Happy Birthday" by Mom, Dad and brother. 

Today happened to be the first day of school back from Spring Break (boo), and Calen announced no more than 20 minutes before we were leaving that he needed to bring in cupcakes to school for his class. Because I can whip those babies up in 15 minutes. So instead, we ran to the exchange and bought a package of Chips Ahoy cookies and I told him to tell his classmates to imagine they were cupcakes, and call it good. He liked that idea. 

At lunchtime I decided it would be fun to surprise him at school with a McDonald's Happy Meal instead of a lame school lunch. We ate together in the cafeteria and I got to watch the chaos that is elementary school lunchtime.

After school, Brad came home early and we did presents. We only had two small presents (and one big one outside), so I thought it would be fun to do a scavenger hunt instead of just sitting and opening. It took him all over the house: in his shoes, in the pantry (with a favorite bag of chips), on the toilet (where one of his presents sat), in the library closet upstairs (where a new book awaited), in the clothes dryer (another present inside), in the game closet and then finally taking him to the garage where a full size basketball hoop awaited him (unassembled, because life). It was so fun to watch him run through the house and be truly excited and grateful for everything he received. 

It's Monday which means baseball practice for him, that we allowed him to cut out early from so we could continue our tradition of the birthday boy picking where we go out for dinner. This year he wanted Orange Chicken from Panda Express. What can I say, the kid has good taste. 

Birthday dinner!

Followed by our annual trip to Toys R Us where he uses his birthday money to pick out what he wants. I love watching him wander through the store deciding what he wants. For the first time in eight years, he passed by the matchbox cars without picking one. Instead, he picked out a much desired Nerf gun, two small Lego race car sets, and a larger pack of Pokemon cards. 

Birthday swag!

He told me it was the best birthday ever, so I guess we did something right. And we had fun too. 

I can't believe he's eight. The days are long but the years fly by. Happy birthday buddy. 

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