(Still) Birthday!

Last week was busy with Birthday Part II, III, and IV and that whole holiday thing on Thursday. Thankfully, the weekend was pretty relaxing. Not quite as relaxing as we planned since the refrigerator stopped working on Friday morning. (Thankfully, after a little over three hours of tinkering, we had that bad boy functioning again except for the ice maker which went from hyperactive to comatose. But, hey, ice cube trays bring retro fun into the kitchen!) Also, we Tetris'ed up the house again to get the boys' beds out of the sunroom for the winter. Lots of random stories to share, but for tonight, here are some pics of all the birthday madness.

Birthday Madness Part II involved Leon and Michael's birthday celebration at school. They light a candle to represent the sun, and they hold a globe to represent the earth. Then the "earth" travels around the "sun" once for each year of their life. While they are walking, the teacher reads stories about what happened to them in that year.

They actually had a pretty nifty candle holder. The kids put on four pieces representing the seasons to encircle the candle, and then put on "rays" labeled with the months of the year.

We always take the kids out to eat for their birthdays and, of course, we go to a restaurant of their choice. For birthday celebration number 3 (!), the boys wanted to have dinner at Chuck E. Cheese. We went on Wednesday night, and there were mercifully only three or four other families there.

For anyone who is curious, they haven't updated it much since we were kids. The band is the same and it still plays 80s music. Apparently, those guys are difficult to reprogram! There is a TV next to the stage with a "hipster" guy who talks about 80s music and explains what records are so the kids can get the references of the chef with the bad Italian accent. So wrong.

While we were there, Leon went nuts, running from game to game, spending his tokens as fast as he could.

The girls road on a simulation roller coaster.

The images were actually pretty fun to watch.

Leon and Michael's actual birthday was on Thanksgiving. Although we typically celebrate family birthdays after dinner, the boys were so excited that for birthday celebration four, we let them open presents in the morning before everyone got dressed. It was like a little Christmas morning preview.