We Have a Seven Year Old!

Joshua turned seven on the 18th (Thursday) and we had the most amazing day! Seriously, it couldn't have been better. Joshua got out of school at 11:20am (which hardly ever happens) and we took advantage of it and spent the day together as a family. Since it was such a gorgeous day I took Daniel and Lucas to the neighborhood park in the morning. I timed it so that we could meet the school bus and get Joshua on our walk home. After I fed the kids lunch and got Lucas down for his nap I called Jake to come home so Joshua could open his presents.



After Joshua and Daniel worked on building his new Lego sets for a while and Lucas woke up from his nap we headed out to a place that has completely inflatable play structures and let loose for a while. This was the "Junior" location and even a little one as young as Lucas had plenty to do. It was perfect for the age range of our kids.



This was cruelty to toddlers; Lucas wanted these balls in the worst way. Unfortunately they were firmly attached to each corner of the play structure (it kind of reminds me of the Greek myth surrounding Tantalus):

After all the bouncing, jumping, sliding and running around we headed over to Red Robin for dinner.

Joshua had heard from some friends that if you go on your birthday you get ice cream with a cherry on top and he wanted to find out for himself if it was true. Looks as if!


We had a great time there and I knew it was the perfect place for us when one of the songs that played was "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Greenday and I heard the line, "...seven years has gone so fast..." Kind of surreal.

After dinner we headed over to the Lego store where Joshua wanted to spend his birthday money. It was really sweet because Daniel had decided he wanted to buy Joshua a lego for his birthday with the money he had been saving up. They ended up working together to choose two Star Wars sets that complemented each other pretty well, ones that they both really wanted to play with. Seeing such teamwork really warms this momma's heart!

Once we got home I put Lucas to bed and we had an ice cream cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to the birthday boy.

We let Joshua and Daniel stay up late since there was no school the next day (a Friday start to spring break -- yeah!) and work on Legos some more. Joshua ended up completing his first set that night. He worked on the rest of his sets most of the next day and finished all the rest of them, I believe 4 sets in all. I will always be amazed with how quickly he can assemble what I consider to be some pretty complex sets, but I do wish that the process could last a bit longer. Well, maybe it's not such a bad thing that Lucas is working on disassembling them as I type because it will give Joshua an opportunity to rebuild them, right? Somehow I get the feeling Joshua may not see it that way...

Anyway, I am so thankful that we have had Joshua in our family for seven years now! I think about all that Jake and I have learned as parents in that time, the experience we've gained and how much we've all grown. Thank you Joshua for agreeing to be our first child! You are so great and thankfully you are pretty resilient to the parenting mistakes we sometimes make with you being our first. What a special boy you are and we are so proud of the person you are becoming. What a perfect day we all shared together celebrating you!