We had a great few days celebrating Nathan's ninth birthday. He spent his eighth birthday at Disney World doing alll the magical things, so there was no way we could top that, but even in the midst of a pandemic, I think he had a pretty special day. He did get to skip school on his birthday, which was exciting for him :).
He requested monkey bread for breakfast.
Since we were limited in our celebrations this year for his birthday, I made him a puzzle/treasure hunt to find his presents. It turned out great. I think he really liked it. For his first hint, he had to use coded numbers in a Sudoku puzzle and ask three of his friends via text for letter combinations that spelled out Grammy's address.
He got his second clue at Grammy's house and then we had to take a break until Matt got off work so he didn't miss out on the fun.
His second clue led him to the rocks at our pond.
His third clue was tough. He had to solve a crossword puzzle and then unscramble the highlighted letters for his fourth clue
He couldn't figure out the word before dinner, so we paused for Taco Tuesday- his dinner request which was fitting for my Cinco de Mayo boy
With some help from Dad he solved the fourth clue and quickly decoded the final clue to find out his presents were in the secret fort Daddy had built for the kids in the attic.
He had worked hard for those presents that he found and couldn't wait to open them.
He asked for an ice cream cake for his birthday and picked out a Reeses peanut butter ice cream cake. He chose well! We all loved it.
He used his birthday money to buy a big Harry Potter Lego set and had it completed the next day.
On Saturday after his birthday, we had a small friend party for him. His birthday fell sort of in a limbo phase where things had started to reopen but there were still a lot of restrictions in place. I told him he could invite three friends (and two younger brothers) to his party and thankfully everyone was able to come.
Initially when he was planning his birthday party he wanted to invite a few friends to an escape room. Since we weren't able to do that, I bought him an escape room board game. He got right to work on it as soon as his friends arrived.
They took a quick dinner break before they got back to work.
We also invited Wyatt's little sister to play with Elisabeth during the party. Those girls were SO excited to finally be together again. They happily played together the whole night and never once bothered the boys.
A few of the boys weren't as interested in the game and headed upstairs to play video games. I was glad they were comfortable enough to find something else to do. I had been a little worried about some kids not liking puzzles as much.
Nathan and his friend Caleb were very into it though! And Nathan's sweet, sweet friend Brett didn't seem to love it, but he wanted to stay with Nathan the whole time anyway. Nathan has really developed some strong friendships with some great kids during the last few years. I'm so thankful for that.
These sweet girls came downstairs to show off their dresses. That was about the only time we saw them.
After the boys successfully escaped the mansion, they celebrated with ice cream and then everyone ended up playing outside until the party was over.
We had a great time celebrating our awesome NINE year old!
No comments:
Post a Comment