Gabe is 9

And the celebration took a whole week!  Ha!  Not really but sort of.  We were having a hard time coordinating when family could come and when friends could come so we did a family dinner last Saturday and had friends over yesterday.  His party couldn’t start until he went out for testing for the Highly Capable program.  He’s technically already pre-qualified for next year but the school is having him finish the test anyway.  I’m sure he did brilliantly but we won’t get the test results for a couple of months.

As usual, I don’t have a lot to say but I do have a lot of pictures:

The family dinner.  My sister and dad come as well as my sister’s foreign exchange student and a friend of the family.  Also my friend Nora and her whole family come since it fits in their schedule better and they’re pretty much family anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gabe was given a choice of the kind of cake he wanted and he picked a chocolate fudge bundt cake with sprinkles.  Easy enough for me – yay!

Elias says “I Matman!”

After the party my sis takes all the kids with her and gives us a couple of days off.  Sunday we got to go to church, then to lunch and even shopped a book store all by our lonesome.  Rob worked the next day so I even got to do a few things by myself.  At first I felt a little lost but I managed to do a few fun things just myself.

Fast forward to his party yesterday (some of the pics aren’t here because I don’t know if a couple of his friends’ parents are OK with having their photos online).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rob concocted this wonderful Angry Bird Triathlon in keeping with Gabe’s party theme of choice.  The kids were divided into teams doing the different activities.  1) Coloring an Angry Bird page, points were given for coloring and then for the kids’ pick of favorite 2) Completing one level of the Angry Birds game on the iPad, points equal to their score 3) Playing the Angry Birds Jenga game, points given for pieces knocked down.  Elias mostly just bombed the photos I was trying to take of the activities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were prizes for first and second place.  We were all a little surprised when Gideon won first place.  Apparently all his time “practicing” at both the electronic and “real” Angry Birds games has paid off.  Gabe came in second.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had every intention of making Gabe’s cake again.  He wanted lemon so I baked that cake, two rounds, put the first round on the platter and covered it with raspberry filling.  Mmm.  Looking good.  Then went to move the second round and could tell right away it wasn’t going to be easy.  The second piece was falling apart just sitting there.  I did everything I could to move it in one piece and managed to get it on the bottom round but it just disintegrated.  I even tried “gluing” the major pieces together with frosting but I’d be working in one area and the other areas were falling apart even more.  I have no idea what happened.  So I had to make a call to a local grocery store for an emergency cake.  They did the grass and sky and I put on the Angry Birds pieces (from one of our games).  Oh well, at least we had a cake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afterward the kids get to try out one of the games Gabe got for his birthday.  At one point we walked out to meet the chickens, a couple of Gabe’s friends were so excited to meet real chickens and had lots of questions about them and their eggs.  I ended up sending two of them home with half a dozen eggs.  They were possibly more excited and them then they were the goody bags.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No post is complete without a cat picture, right?  Silas and Savannah spent the party trying to figure out what the heck was going on and had to have some time to chill after.

It was a great time celebrating our oldest.  We are so blessed by him.  He’s smart, funny, inquisitive and we just enjoy him so much!