About a Joy: 10 and 4: The Birthdays

It seems to me that Dawson and Evan are having birthdays every.single.year.

Does that happen to anyone else?

Dawson celebrated his 10th birthday last week. 10. Double Digits. A decade!

We stayed home that night and gave him his gift: The Lego Jurassic World Indominous Rex Breakout set:

It actually takes longer to build than it does to pronounce.

I kind've want a gyro-sphere now.

Then he was allowed to choose a few buddies from school and have his party at Sky Zone, which is a local trampoline place. I don't highly recommend being in close proximity to stinky, sweaty, red faced 4th graders unless it's required by birth.

I've asked Dawson if he'd like to be a cliff diver but he said no.

Evan loves Dawson's buddy Ethan. Mainly because Ethan will let him do stuff like this:

Speaking of Evan, no Olympian can match his jumping skills.

Yesterday we had Evan's birthday party at our house. Is there anyone out there willing to admit that birthday parties at your house are hard work? I thoroughly enjoyed having our friends and family here. But the cleaning before and after the party caused fatigue I haven't felt since he was a newborn. Note to self: Self, have parties at other people's houses going forward.

This cutie bug sitting on the floor is baby Josiah, brother of Evan's friend Jakin. He is blind and our entire church is praying for his healing. The purse in the picture should totally be mine, but it belongs to Josiah's mom Hayley, and since she's my friend, I have a pretty good feeling I can talk her into giving it to me.

Dawson has recently learned to make balloon novelties (I'm greatly hoping I'm using that word correctly). So we had him make some balloon animals and swords for the kids.

If there is anything I absolutely DO NOT recommend, it is this! NO BALLOONS AT PARTIES! More on this sensitive subject in a minute. Let's discuss cupcakes first.

I made cupcakes. See:

Complete with homemade frosting which incorporated the use of flour, of all things.

Evan got 4 candles on his cupcake because he turned 4 and Jason knows math.

More of those dadgum balloons were left on the gift table and I didn't have the forethought to take them outside and burn them.

For the record, I'm convinced that YouTube videos depicting the instructions to wrap odd shaped packages are digital. There's no way it can be done. (I also feel the same about instructions to fold a fitted sheet).

Guests began to arrive and I was all like "Let's get this party started!".. because I'm a party animal by nature. Even though I go to bed at 8:30.

Here you go Jenessa, this cute one is for you! #Cousins

Sadie is one of Evan's best buddies. Evan wouldn't set down that balloon! Curse them!

Jason hung a Happy Birthday Banner up because we're great parents that way.

After eating, we let the kids play a bit and then we called them into the waste of space room to open presents.

And this is when the balloon problem began. All manner of chaos and annoyance involving ~~people~~ my brother-in-law hitting me on the head or in the face or in general in a consistent and aggravating way commenced. Kids were hitting each other. Irritation Fest 2016.

Take a close look at this picture because it's the only one I was able to get of Evan opening presents without army crawling my way into the madness.

See: The tight circle of present protection program took over.

Apparently whatever Jakin got Evan was good, because we got a hug out of it.

Halfway through the chaos, we let Dawson open some gifts. You know I've blogged all of the boys' birthdays. That's 10 years of birthday blogs for this boy. (of course, it still counts that I just blogged his 5th birthday this year).He had been waiting and waiting because he begged for money (or gift cards) this year since he had his heart set on Legos. How does Lego get so much money for plastic squares anyway? Since we didn't have a party with the family for him, they brought his gifts to Evan's party.

His patience paid off. Literally. With the gift cards and money he received from friends and family, he was able to buy a skateboard:

And the Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon which I had to ask several times "what is it called again" because I've never been able to sit though an entire Star Wars movie. Let alone the trilogy. Sci-Fi is confusing Ya'll.

Anyway, back to the party:.

I hovered all Mission Impossible style from the ceiling to capture this photo of Evan with a gift.

Here he is opening this one. I used ninja skills to capture the video.

He loves play dough. I was happy with his reaction to this gift even if he did continuously end every reaction with "I want another present".

Finally, we managed to move on to the important cupcake eating portion of the day.

We sang the Happy Birthday song:

Then we had the extreme privilege of warm enough weather to head to the back yard and play. This is when I had the ~~awesome~~ idea to have my picture taken with Evan for memories sake. Do you have the patience to scroll through the number of photos it takes for Evan to love his mother?