Happy 7th Birthday, Alden!

Yesterday (May 15), Alden turned 7. I can't believe that my baby is seven. Michael would tell you that he's a third of the way to being home from his mission. Yikes! That thought makes me shiver. I hope so much that I'm teaching him well and helping him learn everything he needs to be happy and to be a good person. As I've mentioned here before, I'm so pleased with what a good boy he is. I love that he tries to help other people and make them happy. He really tries to be a friend to everyone. That makes me happy.

Recently I've been watching a lot of our home movies of when Alden was a baby (I'm trying to convert all of our tapes to DVD). Anyway, it's been so much fun. Alden was such a cute little boy. I love remembering all the special little things that he did and seeing his personality develop, even before he was a year old. It's really amazing. It makes me so glad that we purchased a new video camera so that I can preserve the memories of all my boys throughout their growing up years.

Anyway, I think he had a really great birthday. Michael got him up at 5:30 yesterday morning to take him to breakfast with his seminary students. Usually on Friday, Michael has seminary in our basement. Alden always enjoys coming down and being part of the class before he has to run off to catch his bus. Since yesterday was Michael's last day of teaching seminary for the school year, he took all the kids out to breakfast at Bob Evans. I think Alden felt pretty special that he was able to go. Later, I took cupcakes into his class at school, and then his class had a special "Donuts for Dads" that Michael went to. It was a ton of fun for Alden. When he got home, he played with his brothers while I made him a light saber cake and his favorite dinner, chicken soup. When Michael got home, he opened his presents. He got a lot of Star Wars stuff, a cool puzzle from Aunt Diane & Uncle Doug's family, and a few chapter books and Star Wars stuff from Grandma & Grandpa Humphries. He was so excited to open all his gifts. After we ate, we ran to the YMCA for his and Thobe's last day of Hit and Scoop (a pre-baseball class that teaches some baseball fundamentals). He then came home and played the Wii with Dad and Thobe and played with his toys. All in all, you'd think that would have been plenty.

However, today he had even more fun. He had a Star Wars birthday party where 10 of his friends came over to our house for a chaotic adventure. We had each kid make lightsabers with a swimming noodle and a pvc pipe. They then went downstairs where Michael had created an awesome Jedi training obstacle course complete with Yoda feet, pylon cones to zig zag through, tubes to climb through, caves to crawl under, Tauntauns to ride, circles to spin, and Darth Vader to defeat at the end. I think the kids LOVED it! We then had them go outside and draw Death Stars on the side walk. Originally we planned on throwing water balloons at the Death Stars to bomb them, but the rain took care of that. We then took the kids back in the house, gave them each a paper clone mask that I found on ebay, and then had them play a fun game of Captain Rex May I with our birthday boy being Captain Rex. We then passed around a thermal detonator (Scattergories timer). When the timer ran out, the person holding the timer was "blown up." The worst part about that is that Thobe cried when Alden got destroyed. We then gave each kid a balloon and told them that they had to keep it off the floor with the lightsaber. It's amazing how quiet 13 kids can get when they're concentrating. I liked that game the best. Finally, we had them hit a Darth Vader pinata with their light sabers and then went upstairs for cake and ice cream and presents. It was really fun.

When we asked Alden what he liked best, he said it was having all his friends over and the obstacle course. When he asked me what I liked best, I told him that it was when most of the kids went home. He didn't like my answer so much. I'm glad that they all came, but three boys as opposed to thirteen is much quieter and a lot less work for that matter.

All in all it was a great day. Tomorrow after church we're going to Toledo to celebrate Alden and Abuelita's birthday with Grandpa and Abuelita. It should be a lot of fun.