Ben's Birthday

February 15th was crossed a milestone....we now have a child that is double digits!!! That's right, Ben turned 10 years old and I can hardly believe it. Didn't we just become parents to him? This year, Ben's birthday fell on President's Day, so the kids were off from school. We started the day with breakfast and opening a few presents.  Ben was pretty excited about his new magnetic dart board!

The whole week leading up to his birthday, Ben kept telling me that all he really wanted to do on his birthday was to go sledding with two of his best friends.  I kept telling him that the temps were unseasonably warm this winter and we hadn't had snow barely at all this winter, so that likely wouldn't happen.  Well, behold a birthday miracle.  It snowed the entire day and night before his birthday!  AND, his two buddies were free to go sledding with him!  So, Paul took the kids over to the big sledding hill while Matthew napped (as you know, I do NOT like the cold and snow, so I happily stayed home while he napped, as long as Paul took pictures of all the fun I was missing in the nice warm house!).

The girls had so much fun too.

Pure joy.

After spending almost 2 hours on the sledding hill, Paul brought them home (after a quick stop for hot chocolate) and we had spaghetti for dinner and then Texas sheet cake at Ben's request.  

I kept asking him if he wanted me to decorate the cake at all, but he didn't.  So I wrote on it in red gel and he asked for all pieces of cake without the red gel!  So we got some really cool glowing candles to make it extra special.  You can't really tell from this picture, but the candles glowed in different colors.

Still hard to see in this picture, but the candles are glowing in colors.

It was a really fun day for him.

You can tell he was happy!

The next weekend we had Ben's birthday party with his friends.  This time, I looked for ways to decorate the cake without using other types of icing.  He was having a sports party, so little candy footballs and soccer ball candles is what we went with for the cake.

We rented out one of the park district gyms and had about 15 of his friends to play a few sports for a few hours.  Uncle Brandon helped Matthew get in on the basketball fun too!

Thankfully Paul joined in to referee the games because it was very competitive - I can now see what recess is like and why they tend to have some issues during recess!

I was proud of Abbey for getting right in there and playing with the boys too.

The girls that were working the party brought out a Matthew sized basketball net for him to play with.  He still wanted Uncle Brandon's help though!

They played football, soccer and then floor hockey.  The kids had a blast!

Then it was time for cake!

I love how Matthew joins in everything the big kids are doing.  He is not intimidated at all - he just watches, figures that is what he is supposed to do too, and goes for it!  Big boy joining the group for cake!

This picture sort of shows how crazy the party was - the boys look riled up and this was the calmest we could get them to try to get a picture!  It was a lot of fun for them (and I think the parents all appreciated picking them up after they had run around hard for 2 hours!).

Then we went home and opened presents.

I just can't believe Ben is 10!  He has grown so much this year and is maturing so quickly.  He has had a great year and we are so proud of him.  We took him in to the doctor and discovered that he is 56.5 inches and 82 pounds (that puts him only 3.5 inches shorter than me!).  He was consistent in his percentages at 78% for both height and weight.  It won't be long before he catches me!  We love you buddy - welcome to double digits!  We can't wait to see what is in store next for you!