Happy Birthday Sam!

Sam turned 8 on January 11th. We celebrated his birthday a day early--on Saturday the 10th. We told Sam we weren't going to do a friend party this year. So instead we let him choose our activities for the ENTIRE day on Saturday.

Activity #1: OPEN PRESENTS...in the MORNING!

It should be noted that Sam woke up at 1:00 AM, 3:00 AM, 7:00 AM and 7:30 AM and came in each time to ask if it was time to open the presents. UGH!



One of Sam's favorite presents is this iPod Shuffle Rachel gave him (her old one). He loves his new Skull Candy headphones and iPenguin to go with it. Other honorable mentions: a massive Nerf gun (did we actually buy our kid a GUN?!), Transformers, his own scriptures with his NAME on them, a cool piggy bank, and a renewal subcription to Lego Brickmaster.







ACTIVITY #2: Play with presents, find batteries, read instructions, clean up massive amounts of packaging material.

This is Sam and Andy enjoying the mini Transformers set. Jen has only stepped on two of them so far.

ACTIVITY #3: Lunch at McDonald's (not pictured) where Sam enjoyed a Hotel for Dogs Happy meal with a plain cheeseburger, french fries and root beer.


ACTIVITY #4: Go shopping with birthday and Christmas money. We wouldn't let Sam spend any money in December, so he had a little stash saved up and we let him buy what he wanted (and didn't get for his birthday).

ACTIVITY #5: Soft Play at the Fun Park with Rachel and cousins Leah and Hannah. This is a picture of Sam after he's been running around the germ infested slides and tunnels.





ACTIVITY #6: Bowling at the Fun Park.

Here is Uncle Andy helping Leah get a strike!




















Carrie is SO cool with her hot pink ball. So tell us, Carrie--how did you do? What's that...did you say you bowled a 30??? And that Leah did better than you?












These bowling shoes are, like, SO totally rad, man!














Does this orange ball make me look fat?










Sam got tired and wanted to go home after 5 frames of bowling (much to everyone else's dismay). But since it was his birthday, we had to oblige.

ACTIVITY #7: Pizza Hut Pizza (pepperoni and black olive on pan crust, of course). The pizza delivery guy was only an hour late.

ACTIVITY #8: Cake (lemon) and ice cream (Aggie Ice Cream Lemon Custard). Jen made the cake look like a present with a bow on top. Rachel (in the background) played "Happy Birthday" on the bass as we all sang along.








ACTIVITY #9: Pinata
Sam didn't like the pinata I bought, so we tore off the pictures and pasted on new ones he colored himself. This was a "pull the string" kind of pinata, not the "whack the pinata blindfolded and see if we can get on America's Funniest Home Videos" pinata (we are SO boring).








Hannah (almost 2) had the quote of the day. As soon as all of the candy came tumbling out, she grabbed a Dum Dum and said, "I gotta *ucker"!



ACTIVITY #10: Collapse. We can't decide if we really achieved anything by telling Sam NO FRIEND PARTY this year. We certainly didn't save any money and we were certainly not any less tired! We did have a great time and Sam really loved planning an entire day of activities. (We hope he enjoyed it, it may be just a one time event!)