Jake's 9th Birthday

So for the last few years it's been, "football, football football" for Jake's birthday. This year he said he wanted to do a sleep over with a bunch of his buddies, which was fine with us as truthfully, I was running out of football themed ideas anyway. 


He invited seven of his friends from school (six of them spent the night).  Tanner and Faith also joined in. It was more than a little heartbreaking to see Tanner's face fall apart when he learned that he couldn't sleep in with the big boys and was sleeping in our room. To be fair, we had told him three or four times from the time we scheduled the sleepover until the day of the sleepover and he said "okay" each time, but when the time came, he just lost it.


As a surprise, I spent most of the day on Saturday installing the projection TV system from the new house in the boys bedroom. I hung it in the closet and shot it onto a king size white sheet across the room. I also hooked up the surround sound and brought the Wii upstairs (right, sometimes I over-do it) so they could watch movies and play larger than life size video games all night. 

As soon as his friends started to arrive... they all went across the street to the green and started a flag football game. Tanner took up his usual position of ref and they played football for a good 45 minutes, returning to the house in full hyperactive sweaty 9 year boy mode, which they would be in for the rest of the party.


We had Papa Murphy's take and bake for dinner and then Jake opened presents. He got a bunch of Raiders stuff, water bottles, chewing gum and sunflower seeds, and gift cards to two different sporting goods stores. Then it was upstairs to play, what else..Madden on the big screen. 7 sweaty, smelly 9 year old boys locked up in a room with a heat generating TV projector, had about the effect that you would assume and when they came downstairs a little bit later for cake, I went up and turned on the ceiling fan and opened all of the windows to try to air the room out. It made us realize that maybe a conversation regarding deodorant and personal hygiene wasn't far off in the future.


After cake it was upstairs for the evenings movie selection....Rudy. We pulled all of the mattresses onto the floor and popped popcorn while they all watched Rudy on the bigscreen. Towards the big game scene at the end we could hear them from downstairs chanting, "RUDY, RUDY, RUDY" (because all the windows were open up there, so could our whole street actually) as they got really into it. After the movie it was more video games until bedtime. Eventually we closed the windows and they all fell asleep about 10:30. They made a pact for the first one up to wake everyone else though, so they were back at it at 6:00 am the following morning.


Jake wanted very specific donuts for his birthday breakfast. I hit the road at 6:00 in the dark and rain to make sure I got the one's he wanted. In the photo, you can see him with his local favorite "bacon maple bar". After breakfast? You guessed it, more video games until pick-up time at 10:00. 


After about 8:00 am, pickup time couldn't get here fast enough for us. It was a lot of fun, but the constant noise, chaos, smell and need to make sure everyone was having a good time started to get to me. 10 minutes after his friends left, Jake came in and announced that he was bored and he literally almost didn't get any older. 


It was a looooong rest of the day with three tired kids and tired parents. But Jake got the sleepover he wanted, which ended up being football themed anyway and had a really good time with his friends. As he continued to complain (along with Tanner), they spent the rest of Sunday cleaning every room in the house, making beds, putting away laundry. The real lesson here is when Dad works all day to make sure you have a fun birthday party; 1. you BETTER say thanks, and 2. you BETTER leave him alone to clean it up in peace.