The Big Ten

Clayton is a decade old. I can hardly believe I'm old enough to have a ten-year-old.  And what a remarkable ten-year-old he is!  Clayton is my right and left hand.  My thinker.  My problem-solver and peace-maker.  My absent-minded professor.  Clayton is diligent and determined.  He is patient and compassionate.  Confident and kind.  Clayton is my heart and soul. 

To celebrate his birthday, we hosted a "Games and Pizza" night (his idea).  It was so much fun!

As a pre-party event, I offered to take all the kids to a restaurant of Clayton's choice.  I was thinking, Olive Garden, IHOP, or Red Robin - his favorite places.   But honestly, I was a little relieved (and surprised) when he wanted to go to Chuck-E-Cheese.  Huh?  Whew. Oh good. . . he's still a kid. . . not quite so grown-up after all.  I only took one picture.  Of Eliza. It worked out though, because Eliza thought it was her party anyway.

Ever since we visited Grandma Nina in Utah and Clayton pulled out Grandpa Jacks old slot car set, scoured the basement for all the missing pieces, and repaired and re-wired the entire thing, he has been dreaming of and (saving for) his own set.  So Nate took him to the store on his birthday, where he spent almost every dollar of his hard-earned money, plus some birthday money from Grandma Melissa and us, plus the money Nate promised him for learning 10 new hymns on the piano (He practiced like wildfire to play them up to par for Nate). And bought a slot car set.  I've never seen a happier kid.

Now, on to the party.  Starting with the cake.  It's a chess board.  At Clayton's request, I made a "lemon cake with lemon glaze and lemon frosting and a chocolate chess board on top". Yeah, that's real chocolate.  And real lemon frosting. With real lemon-glazed cake underneath.  I won't tell you how long it took me (and how many tries) to make this beauty.  But it was a lot.

Which meant there were free samples of messed-up lemon cake all day long.

Which Clayton thought was a birthday bonus.

Did I mention Eliza thought it was her birthday party?  It worked out great actually.  I just made sure to take a lot of pictures of her too so that we can just count this as her birthday party next month.

We also had chocolate chess cupcakes. 

Eliza was excited about the chocolate "horsies".

Which, I must admit, were pretty delicious.

Moving onto dinner and decor.

Here's the whole crazy crew - 16 kids in all.

We barely had enough pizza.

Time for games.  There was a little bit of tree-climbing - part of the scavenger hunt. They took the "look high in a tree" part very literally.

Soccer.  These boys are very competitive.  We only had few minor injuries.

Hedgehog races.

And dodge ball. Which ended up being the hit game of the night because they played it and played it. . .

into the night.  Big thanks to Nate for completely taking over and referring all the games (and all these crazy kids).  You deserve a medal of honor.

I love this picture of the "pig" ball in midair.  Glad my camera and I got out of the way in time.

And finally cupcakes.

Here's a short video clip of everyone singing happy birthday (and Clayton's friends beating each other up in the background).

Happy birthday Claydog!  

Best ten years I could have ever imagined. . .

Love you, kiddo.