Today, this little baby boy ….

…turns NINE years old.

And I cannot believe it. We are halfway to 18 years old and launch into adulthood (or some semblance of adulthood)… nine years have flown by so fast.

So today, we will have our usual special birthday breakfast (bacon and either pancakes/waffles) … D will go to school and has soccer practice right after. Then for dinner we will be taking him to one of his favorite Japanese restaurants 😉 If you wanna see how else we celebrate today, make sure to follow along on my IG stories @sophiaksays!

We’ve already done a lot of celebrating leading up to today so I thought I’d do a little recap on his birthday party, too. For his party this year, I decided to rent out a mobile gaming truck. It was so cool and as you can tell, someone was VERY excited.

The truck needed a level surface/driveway to park and since our house is on a hill, I had them bring the truck up to the top of our cul de sac because it’s a dead end with no homes (just fire trail access).

I will say the rain really complicated things for us because I had 20 boys coming over to this gaming truck and our original plan was to have drop off/pick up at our house so (1) it would be easier for parents to remember and (2) they could leave their gifts at our house and we could just walk the boys up to the gaming truck as they arrived. Because it was terrible weather though, I asked the parents to instead drop off at the top of our street directly at the gaming truck. A few parents (okay half of them) were extremely confused and caused a huge traffic jam on our street LOLOL. But all’s well that ends well; eventually everyone figured out where to go and it was fine. I brought our SUV up to the top of the street and had everyone drop their gifts into our trunk like so:

The gaming truck came with two “attendants” who sort of monitored game play inside the truck but J stayed close by just in case of emergencies. He said the truck was a lot of fun and trust me, he wasn’t complaining about needing to supervise the party while I stayed at our house with our girls. The truck has screens on the outside where J played his games, and the inside had FOUR screens with different games going on simultaneously that boys could play together.

Back home, I got the pizza/favors ready because after the two hours of video games, the plan was to move the party to our house. Again, this was a last minute rain pivot. The video game truck understandably doesn’t allow food inside so I was going to set up tables for food and stuff in our backyard; our backyard is really big and great for hosting parties with lots of kids. The inside of our house? Not so much 😵‍💫 Anyway, we ended up bring in some of our outdoor tables and benches and connecting it with our existing dining table and calling it a day. I doubt a bunch of third grade boys noticed or cared.

J walked down the entire group of boys after the time on the game truck was done. Have you ever opened your front door to 20 amped up third grade boys? No? Well, lucky you. Jk 😉 They ate pizza …

Sang happy birthday and had cake …

And about ten minutes after cake, I realized .. I cannot hold all these boys inside my house anymore 😂 Rain or no rain, I told them ALL to get their jackets on and go outside LOL!!!! And you guys? They had a BLAST. I almost feel like the backyard was even more fun because it was raining LOL! Thankfully, it was just a light sprinklish rain and not a total downpour. They played basketball and this weird trampoline game out in the rain .. I don’t know what they did honestly but they had a great time getting soaked while they waited for their parents to come.

Pretty soon, all the parents came and all of them were very gracious and understanding about me throwing their sons out into the rainy backyard. One of D’s closer friends stayed a little longer and hung out with him about an hour after the party ended.

Overall, it was a sweet time and I’m glad that these boys are still innocent enough that a few hours of video games and pizza were enough for me to get compliments at work all the following week about how great a party D’s birthday was (another perk of working at the school… the boys know me as Mrs. K from the library too).

Then this past Sunday, we celebrated D’s birthday again but with our sweet FRamily friends who have a daughter with the exact same birthday. We call them the twins 😉 The twins FaceTimed each other a few days before dinner to figure where we should all go and LB Steakhouse in San Ramon is where they settled on. The steakhouse was a GREAT venue to celebrate two very special 9 year olds.

These two twins have been friends since they were newborns!!

We ate great food, had good conversations, then sang happy birthday to these two cuties:

I love their friendship 🤩 I hope they get to celebrate their birthday together for many years.

D! I cannot believe you are NINE years old today. I am so proud of the young man you are growing into. I hope you stay the gentle, hardworking, and tender soul you are and am praying that God allow the seeds of faith I see sprouting in you to blossom into genuine fruit. You are the BEST brother, a loving son, responsible and witty, diligent in all that you are asked to do. I love you to the moon and back, little man!