Alex is 7!!!

I just saw that it has been 3 weeks since I've blogged. I've gotta stop this. Gotta get back in the groove of things. And it's not even that I haven't had anything to blog about. There has been plenty going on. I'm totally a loser. Well let's get to it then!

On March 25th, my "little" Alex turned 7 years old. I'm still trying to figure out where the time went, because when I add it up, the numbers just don't match. :) As usual for our kids birthdays, we had a few parties. The first one was on his birthday. That night happened to be the 1st soccer game of the season. So we headed over to the field to practice and then play our game. Our team has not been great at winning. Of all approx. 10 games last season, we only won 2 of them. Not that it really matters. They all have a great time. But I was suspecting that since we hadn't had any practices in 4 months and winter keeps you from really playing outside, that we were really going to bomb this 1st game. Well, the boys all proved me wrong. We won! It was a great start to the season and a great thing to happen on his birthday. My parents, Ryan's parents and one of our nephews were able to watch Alex play. After the game we all went back to the house. Ryan's sister and other nephew met us there. We watched Alex open his presents and then we had cake and ice cream. It was a fun, yet laid back evening.

Two of our nephews - Dylan and Marc

Grandpa and Grandma Wood

Alex with his presents

These little creatures are puffles. They are from Club Penguin and are currently Alex's favorite thing. I must admit, they are adorable!

Alex holding one of his Club Penguin's. This is the Ninja Penguin.

We didn't do too much for Alex's birthday on Friday, but we were gearing up for Saturday. Saturday morning I went and picked up Alex's puffle cupcakes (more of an explanation on what puffles are in a bit). Soon after, we headed down to Draper for his birthday party at Boondocks. I let him invite 6 friends, although 1 was a no show. So the party included Ryan, me, Alex, Darek, my Mom, my Dad, my sister Bethany, brother in law Chad, and friends Reilly, Aaron, Jaxon, Ben and Cade. I'm not sure why I didn't think the crowds wouldn't be bad... but I really wasn't expecting the madhouse of people that were there. We had our table time first. We ate pizza, the hostess tried and failed to entertain the boys with really lame magic tricks, opened more presents and ate more cake and ice cream. (And I wonder why I'm not losing any weight.) After table time, we had a total time of 3 hours to go on rides, laser tag, arcade games, etc. I thought we would get bored way before that time was up. The boys headed over to the race cars first. A few were a little nervous, but they all went on them. The line didn't look too long, but I didn't realize that the track was shared with another line as well. So 45 mins of our time was spent standing in line for the race cars. The boys were adorable on the cars and had HUGE smiles on their faces as they came off the ride. Luckily we were smart and had Ryan and Chad stand in line for us for laser tag while the boys were in line for the race cars. The boys only had to wait about 15 mins to get into laser tag. I was lucky enough to get to join them for this. Our team consisted of all 6 boys, myself and two teenagers. Yeah.... we didn't win. :) Although I was the high scorer out of both teams! Even though we didn't win, the boys had a blast. Of course they are little boys, and they had guns that they could shoot people with. What's better than that??? After laser tag, we went to the arcade. I used all my helpers to keep track of all the boys. We combined all the tickets won and split it evenly for prizes. They all loved picking out their prizes. We had just enough time to take the boys to the XD theater and watch a short 3-D movie. Again, they all loved it. I wish we had more time, but our time was up. I couldn't believe we had stayed the whole time. Two of the boys went home with a Mom that had come. We took Reilly, Aaron and Ben home. After taking them all home, we rushed back over to The Gateway to see How To Train Your Dragon. Although I was exhausted and ready for bed, the movie was really cute and kept me awake. :) After the movie we came home and took it easy the rest of the evening.

While we sang Happy Birthday to Alex, he spun as fast as he could to get 200 tickets around him. He was able to get them all!

Lame card trick

Going around the table from left - Aaron, Darek, Ryan, Jaxon, Cade, Reilly and the back of Alex.

Aaron, Alex, Ben and Darek

Reilly and Cade in the race cars

Ben

Aaron

Jaxon

Cade

Alex

Alex and Reilly

Darek

I don't know how many times throughout the weekend the comment was made, "boy is this kid spoiled!" I know we spoil both our kids to death. But honestly I never regret any of it. These are experiences they will always have.... hopefully. I adore my boys and always want to give them everything I can.

Alex had an excellent birthday. He got everything that he wanted (and more). I truly cannot believe that he is 7 years old. He is excelling in school. His math skills are amazing. He can do addition and subtraction easily and you can give him multiplication and division problems and he can usually figure them out (within reason of course). He reads between a 2nd and 3rd grade reading level. He amazes me with how quickly and easily he figures things out. Sometimes he's a little too good. :) Alex continues to be an amazing big brother. He loves being a big brother and continues to ask for more siblings. If only it were that simple! We love our big kid and love watching him grow and learn new things. Happy Birthday Alex!