Happy Birthday Eric!!

The potential for getting jipped when your birthday is in December is a whole lot stronger than if your birthday were in May. Just ask my dad, his birthday is December 23rd, and as a child, he remembers his birthday and Christmas being lumped all together. As a child that just must have stunk......

Technically, Eric was due December 26th and am I ever glad he made an earlier appearance. As parents, we were spared the agony of party planning around Christmas every year. However, early December still has its obstacles....people are getting busy with holiday parties and such and living where we do, the biggest issue is it's COLD!! Therefore that means if the birthday party is held at our house, all children will be IN the house.....the WHOLE time. We've done it before but decided to party other places this year!

We opted for a make your own slice of pizza venue...close by and fun for all ages! I made the cake...and Eric just told me today that 'he really doesn't like cake'. Hmmm, ok .......try telling me that BEFORE I make the cake honey......

Eric and his friend/soccer buddy Ben and proof that I was actually there-thanks mom!

Everyone got their own piece of dough and went to town designing it to their own liking. I think just about every topping possible was at their fingertips!

What a bunch of kids! Oh, wait, 5 of them are mine........

I bought trick candles that were supposed to relight. Word to the wise...don't buy them at Wal-Mart. They don't work!

So after the pizza, cake, drawing contests and gift opening, we still had about 30 minutes to kill before the Christmas parade started. So, what did we do? Loaded them all (all 15) up into the van and turned on the DVD player!! It was so funny seeing them all pile in and to see how fun they thought it was to cram into the van!

We got the kids all bundled up and made our way to the viewing spot. To say it was cold would be a true statement but not really a completely accurate statement. It was like 30 degrees cold. BRRRRRRR......

Once we got home, thawed out and warmed up, Eric was very anxious to tear into his gifts. Well, I'm one of those mean moms that won't let our kids go hog wild and open up every toy they receive. Oh no, I make them do it one at a time, over time. But the first gift Eric picked was this-

Oh yeah baby-a rapid fire nerf gun. I think we'll be staying out of his way when he's caring that around.

And after he was tucked into bed and fast asleep, the real birthday work started. Every year we decorate a doorway or the living room or bedroom the night before the actual birthday. This year? Well, we went for stacked boxes and a canopy bed.......

Yup, 9 boxes stacked on top of one another and taped together, then set in front of his door in such a way that he had to TRY to get out of his room!

Before he could get out of his room he first had to figure out how to get out of his BED! Amazingly we did this at about 11 o'clock at night and he slept through the whole thing....

Presents.....he is the first one to be so interested in military/guns and all that type of stuff.....

And another round of singing, but this time the candles were stuck in a banana split. Yumm, ice cream at 2 in the afternoon

Happy 8th birthday weekend Eric! Can you stop growing now?