Eight is Great!

Happiest of Birthdays to my first born!  You are one heck of a kid and I am so lucky to be your mom buddy.  You are so kind and generous, you love to laugh and have a good time and even at 8, you're still a mama's boy and I love it :)

Zane's plan for his birthday was to run a 5k - weirdo.  So, I found one in Seattle and he and I signed up for it.  When I woke up this morning it was POURING and SO windy.  I try not to be a wuss, but man oh man, I had no desire to go out and run in that business.  I was also afraid of tree branching falling/breaking off and hitting us on the course!  Maybe that was my "logical" made up excuse, but it made me feel less guilty about not going.  I asked Zane what he wanted to do and he agreed not to go run.  We decided to make the best of the day and do other fun stuff instead.

He was very excited to wake up to 8 balloons in his room!

Onto opening presents:

He was begging for Red Robin for lunch, so of course we made that happen:

Our service was terrible, so our meal ended up being free AND when they brought out his sundae to sing to him - they also brought out a tower of donuts for the rest of us!  Winning :)

After lunch, we headed over to Arena Sports to do some bouncing...they boys had the whole place to themselves for most of the time there - very cool.  Four bouncies for 2 boys - another win for this birthday boy!

After bouncing, we headed over to XXX for a ginormous Root Beer Float - Zane devoured the entire thing himself and didn't even get a stomach ache...I may have by just watching him though ;)  It was fun trying to guess the amount of carbs in this thing...he ended up with a perfect blood sugar a few hours later; another win for the birthday boy (and for me)!  Landon enjoyed a "kids cone"!

It was so nice having Zane's birthday fall on a weekend this year - we were able to celebrate him the whole day before the craziness of Halloween took over!  It's so hard to separate his birthday from Halloween when school takes up most of the day!  It was a real treat this year!

Words cannot describe my love for this boy.

An Epic Birthday

I love birthdays, especially my own!  It really is my favorite day of the year - selfish?  Maybe, but I love it!  This year was no special birthday - not a "big number", but it was a HUGE birthday in the sense it was the game of all games to decide if the Seahawks would once again go to the Superbowl or not!  I'm late in getting this post up, so obviously we all know the outcome to that story...but it still goes worth repeating - WE WON!  And not only did we win...we won in the last 2 minutes of the game, that is not even possible, but we did it!!!  I seriously had chills watching the game and that is so unlike me!  I love my Hawks, but not one to usually get chills over the games!

We had some friends over and partied it up :)  I haven't drank in quite sometime, but thankfully it didn't take me long to remember how to do it!  After the game, the girls went to the pub up the street to celebrate the game me some more!!  There were quite a few people trickling in who had actually been at the game - it was pretty cool to get their reactions to the game and having been there.  One of the guys brought in one of the towels they handed out at the game, he gave it to the bartender who pinned it to the wall.  Because I was so sober (ha), I saw that it had the date printed on it and the date just so happened to be my actual birthday (duh), so I kindly asked if I could have it and shockingly...he took it down and gave it to me!  Seriously, something I will treasure, how cool!

One of the best gifts I opened!

Can't tell you the last time I took shots before this - I'd say YEARS.  I think it'll be years again!

Pretty cool guy here!

Hawk Shots - yum!

What a great night!!

4th Birthday Party

Landon's long awaited birthday party finally happened today!!  I know it seems silly to post-pone a birthday party 2 weeks after a birthday...but with Christmas, I just need time to decompress and time to plan the birthday!  Last year, I didn't post-pone the party and it drove me crazy all year that Landon's party got the shaft compared to Zane's, so I vowed to never do that again!  I know Landon doesn't care, but I do - pictures prove their parties were so different and I don't want that ever to come back to me later!  "Mom, you always threw such great parties for Zane, but mine were just colored plates and balloons"!  I don't have the money for the therapy, so I'll just take the time to put the effort into his parties too!

This is the first year that he invited friends from outside of our group of friends...he invited quite a few kids from preschool!  He was SO excited for them to come to his party!  This was also the first birthday party the Y had a bouncy house/slide for and he was very excited to be the first party to use it!  I think the kids broke it in well!

On to his Construction themed party!

I love this picture of Landon seeing his cake and the set up for the first time!

I can't let the kids have all of the fun!  Plus Jack needed someone to take him through!

Getting by with a little help from his friend!

Love my little Jack and also love the phase of purposely looking away from the camera!

Pinata time!

Mayhem!