Jake Turned 8!

Yesterday, my Jacob turned 8!!! Every year we celebrate a bit differently depending on what the boys want to do. Some years we end up having two "parties" one at home on the actual birthdate and one on the weekend with the grandparents. February it seems harder to get everyone together for just on celebration especially when the weather tends to be unpredictable. Usually when one of their birthdays falls on a Friday it makes things easier to schedule, but Jacob wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese as his birthday activity. Have you been to a Chuck E Cheese or the like on the weekend, it's pure craziness. I try to avoid such places on the weekends. I have mentioned to the boys maybe we would play hooky on Friday from school and spend a couple hours celebrating instead, seems they would be missing school that morning anyways for doctor appointments. They were all for missing another day of school. We had a busy weekend planned and I wanted to find a way to make sure Jacob was able to get the birthday attention he deserved. Thankfully scouts was canceled on Thursday, which gave us a chance to celebrate a day early and still have the boys in school part of the day Friday. They have missed so much school already due to snow/cold days and preferred they be in school. Plus Jacob could still celebrate with his classmates and bring in his birthday treat. With a new plan in place right after school Thursday we headed down to Chuck E Cheese. There were more people there than I thought there would be but it was far from being crowed. We now have a spending time there to a science, while I order the pizza and find a table the boys head to play in the "tubes", once the pizza arrives and I round up the boys and we eat, then finally the get their tokens. Once the token are gone we cash in our tickets and head home. It seems to be the easiest way to get them out the door with minimal arguing. We discovered awhile back that if you bring in "good" report card that the kids receive a bonus 15 tokens per report card. So all the boys were granted their tokens from mom, bonus report card tokens, and Jacob receive some extra birthday tokens from the cashier.

Looks like A LOT more, but honest, there's only 8 candles

Friday, Jacob's actually birthday ended up being another snow/cold day and there was no school. (Of course it was! We had already managed to figure out a way to celebrate at a less crowded Chuck E Cheese) The down side to having no school on your birthday is you still have to wait until your party to open your presents. At ten in the morning Jacob started with the "When are they going to be here?". Joey had just learned to tie balloons so he helped me set up the party decorations. We had a small party just us and the grandparents for presents, cake and ice cream. Grandma and Papa were barely through the door when Jacob announce that it was time for presents. Amongst his presents he received a skateboard, an album to organize his massif collection of Pokémon cards, and of course more Pokémon cards. Seems it was just the six of us, we enjoyed a homemade cake decorated with Jacob's choice of rice paper (Pokémon).

After Papa and Grandma left we set up for one of bucket list activities and stayed up late watching a movie of Jacob's choice, The Jungle Book.