He Likes To Do His Own Thing

Last week Lex turned 9. Yup, 9. He's been on this earth for 9 years and I really honestly can't think of how that many years has passed.

Being the individual that he is, he DID NOT want a Build A Bear. I was fine with that, except that it meant we'd have to find a gift(s) for him. Thankfully, he made this job easy and knew exactly what he wanted and had a bit of a list that he shared with us.

So the night before his big day (the 11th), Eric and I headed to the store sans kids and bought his gift and a few other items that were needed. It was a good thing Eric was with me because it made deciding on which gift that much easier.

The next day, after jobs were done I let Lex open his gifts...He was so excited.

...Yes, I gave him a container. It was to hold the Lego pieces. Yeah, he was a little confused...

He then went to work building his new Lego Chima thing...

He stuck with it for 3+ hours and actually put it together completely by himself. I was so proud of him.

We then took a swim in the backyard and had a blast. Shaylyn and Lex played quite a few water games while Ailey and I stayed in the middle and just enjoyed the cool water. (Tanis was away at Scout Camp and Nate has something against water)

After we all got changed and some of us showered we took a quick drive to McDonald's. Lex really wanted McD.'s for his birthday dinner, so I took them. Though I'm not a brave mom and we just did drive-thru. I don't like McDonalds, so we also ran to Burger King so mommy could have some dinner.

We got home and I then made some brownies so we could have some brownies and ice cream for a birthday treat. It was a huge hit.

Lex also opted to have a friend party instead of having a family party. I much prefer family parties, but I try to let the kids have what they would like on their birthdays. So on Friday, the 14th, he invited 4 of his friends over. Only 3 came, but that didn't bother Lex in the least.

He wanted a Lego Ninjago/Chima kind of party, but our Walmart kind of sucks at the party supply thing and I procrastinated a bit, so we had to do things as we could. I bought different color napkins, plates, tablecloth, etc. to match the colors of the Ninjago Ninjas. The cake had colorful sprinkles on top and I later discovered colored layers inside which also matched the Ninjas.

The birthday banner was multi-colored and I enlisted Shaylyn's artistic skills and had her draw some Ninjago Ninjas. I drew a couple big Ninjas but they weren't nearly as nice as what Shaylyn came up with.

...Cute little party crasher...

I pretty much let Lex decide how the night would go. We all had pizza and then started playing some video games. After a little bit Lex asked if they should do presents. (Hahaha) His friends readily agreed and it was on to gift time.

...Yup, the tiny car was in that big box...

After gifts they went back to the video games. (Big surprise, eh?) When it got to be around 9, I decided we should probably do cake & ice cream before it got too much later. I was surprised to find that most of the boys weren't interested in dessert at all. One kid only at half a cookie, one kid only ate a bit of cake, even Lex only ate a bit of ice cream and cake. There was only one kid that ate all of his cake and ice cream. Oh well, it meant more for us as the week went on.

Then because it was a sleepover party, we let the boys continue on with video games and movies until they all fell asleep. It took me awhile to get to sleep (I have trouble falling asleep as it is) because of the noise, but I think by about 1 or 2 they had all fallen asleep and we all slept soundly.

The next morning the boys had a breakfast of cereal, OJ and some small donuts. I kept things simple. They didn't care and ate breakfast and played a bit more before it was time for them to go home.

I think Lex had a good birthday and he was happy with all of his gifts. He was so polite to all his friends and even let them all play a game together before he remembered how to get another joystick working so he could join them. He didn't complain at all when they didn't really want to watch the movie he wanted to watch and he went with the flow. I love that about his personality. He'd rather just be having fun and make sure everyone else is having fun than really try to make a scene.

Happy Birthday!!!