JP plus 3: JP turns 7!

It's so hard to believe we have a 7-yr-old! Our little boy is not so little anymore. Every school day I ask him what he did that day and who he played with at recess. I love hearing his stories of 4 square or basketball with his friends. He started out the year pretty shy and often playing by himself. Now he seems to come home everyday and tells me he played tag with a group of kids or searched for coyotes on the playground ?! with the other boys. In the past year he has mastered riding a 2-wheeler, he has lost 2 teeth, and has become an orange belt in karate. JP is continues to be a great artist and amazes me all the time with the things he creates. He can spend 2 hours in the garage taping together old boxes and other miscellaneous items to create rocket ships or boats. He has become quite a good reader this year and has started to get into video games as well with the Wii & DS. Anyone playing him in chess better watch out because he's a pretty good player at that too!

He also has had his share of growing pains learning that sometimes friends do not always make the best decisions and its his job to make good choices for himself. We also wonder some days if his ears are working right because his listening skills are not always the greatest, but based on hearing tests we know they're just fine. You can't be perfect all the time, right? :)

Turning 7 was a pretty big deal around here and we had 3 days of birthday celebrations. On Saturday, 9 of his friends came over for a magic birthday party. This was the first time we attempted a kid bithday at our house. I enlisted 2 of my friends (who were Mom's of boys invited) to stay and help out. We decided Joe would mainly be on triplet duty & I would do my best to run the party. We started off with a treasure hunt to find the "tickets" to magic show. Little boys are funny. They would get so excited that before the clue was even read they would take off running as if they knew where they were going. Even funnier is that Ryan was still napping and slept through what sounded like a pack of elephants running all over the house!

After the tickets were found the magic show started with The Amazing Chad. He did a great job and was so good with the kids. One little boy has seen a bunch of magician secrets exposed DVD's and Chad took it in stride when he kept saying "I know how you did that, I know how you did that". When it came time for JP to be sawed in half the little boys were screaming like crazy. It was all very cute and I think it made JP feel special getting to be the helper in many of the tricks. After some cake & ice cream the boys got to run around the backyard for awhile. I think everyone had fun and it is good to see that ALL little boys are crazy, not just your own! The magician taught the boys how to do some magic tricks and they each were sent home with kits of their own and a magic wand.

On Sunday, we had a family dinner with Uncle Sean, Aunt Anne, George, Uncle Paul, Aunt Caroline and Willa. JP chose spaghetti with grilled artichokes. Interesting combination, but it was good! He also decided on cheesecake for his dessert. He has informed me this is his favorite kind of cake. He received a new Wii game, slip and slide, and a basketball. Such great gifts and he will have so much fun with all of them! After dinner he got to test out the basketball. Two of our neighbors have hoops in the alley that he can play with-lucky kid!

Monday was his real birthday and the day continued with more celebrations. We picked up cupcakes to bring to school for a treat during the day and then Nonnie came over for dinner. He chose delivery pizza for his real birthday dinner. Note he specified "delivery", I guess my homemade isn't tops on his list! He opened our gifts: a Monopoly game, a DS game, a new backpack and a set of golf clubs. Craigslist has been a great place for us to find gifts for the kids and the clubs are just about perfect for him. Linda topped off the night with a new pogo stick. He actually dis pretty well at it for the first time. I'm pretty sure he had a great birthday- did I mention how much cake we ate?!

I took so many pictures that I had to put some in Kodak Gallery at the bottom of the page!