Eli's 9th Birthday

For Eli's 9th birthday we told him he could invite a couple of friends and we'd take them to play at a place of his choosing.  He chose only one friend, Cooper, and picked Ninja Zone as his place to play.  He originally wanted the Ninja Zone at Grand Park, but it had sadly closed, so we went to the Ninja Zone at Wright's Fundamentals.  I didn't know beforehand that Wright's has more silly rules to play there.  I thought that you could play as long as you wanted during their Free Play. (Meaning, I thought if you paid the fee that you could play during the whole 2 hours of their FunTime.)  Turns out you only get 1 hour for the price you pay.  $10/kid for only one hour is crazy!  And we didn't even get there at the start of the hour so they had less than an hour to play!  That was really a bummer.  Though the time went by fast, the kids all had a blast and played hard.

After Ninja Zone we brought Cooper back to our house for pizza, cupcakes, and ice cream.  Then the boys just had a great time playing together.  Whenever Cooper comes over, he and Eli don clothes such as hats and sunglasses to disguise themselves, then like to go around in the neighborhood playing "spies."  Funny boys!

This was an especially fun birthday for Eli to celebrate this year because it was his MAGIC BIRTHDAY!  9 on the 9th means he received NINE presents from Mom and Dad!  He was definitely ecstatic about this!  The grandparents and Lillie joined us for a family celebration.  Some of his '9' from us were a bottle of sprite, a box of DOTS, a few books, a Pokemon guidebook, new tennis shoes, and a Hexbug space set.

THRILLED to finally get to play with his new toys!  He received two remote-controlled vehicles and loved testing them out.  Eli had a bit of a struggle at his party.  He was so anxious to open presents, and of course didn't care one wit about eating. He got a bit pouty and went to his room for awhile when we were eating dinner.  It took some coaxing to get him to come out and finally open his presents.  I know he was glad that he did, though!

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We enjoyed getting to celebrate Eli!