Birthday Booty!

Our birthday tradition is that the birthday person gets to choose what/where we eat for dinner. Due to our impending move and the chaos of our lives, the party will probably be in February, and both kids will have their party together this year. For this reason, we're adding to our traditional festivities by allowing the kids to pick a friend to have a playdate with and join us for dinner. Toph invited his friend, Adam, to join him. They played video games (what else?) all afternoon. We all went to Red Robin for dinner--on a Friday night! Dinner was good, and we finally got home a little bit after 9:00. Time for presents! Adam brought a present with him in the afternoon, and Toph was excited about a frog-shaped punching balloon and big book on insects. The balloon was a very popular object in the car going home and at the house later on. Our gifts to Toph were received in a similar fashion. He's been asking for "how to draw" books for some time. Toph's teacher has many Ed Emberly books that he LOVES to use. So I ordered some from Amazon a long time ago. I also found a "How to Draw Pokemon" book somewhere. In addition to his drawing booty, we also found something to appeal to the environmentalist in my boy--a paper making kit from Bill Nye the Science Guy. If the word science is in the title, we know it will be a winner! We had a lot of fun shredding the paper we were recycling to make new paper. I don't think it's going to be dry in the time period on the directions, however. Maybe when it's cold it takes longer. At any rate, we had a fun time making a little bit of paper, and we're probably going to find materials to allow us to make more at a time.