Steven's 7th Birthday Celebrations

For our kids' birthdays we used to just have big parties with all the extended family. Now that we are far away from our extended family we have to change things up. For Steven's birthday this year we decided to let him pick one activity for us to do as a family and then we'd have cake and ice cream with the neighbors. We also decided to celebrate Steven's birthday the weekend before his birthday since Tyler will be up North on his actual birthday.

The activity he picked was to go to the Michigan Science Center. That was such a great choice. It finally got us out of the house and everyone had a great time. The kids never wanted to leave any of the exhibits, we kept having to drag them onto the next ones. We got a membership so we will definitely be going back there.

Steven & Ben inside a "furnace":

Lucy helping to make roads:

Penny was actually super the content the whole time. The center had lots of lights and noises and I think that kept her entertained:

'

Grandma & Lucy crossing the "Mackinac bridge":

Oh no! My family is turning into couch potatoes!:

Lucy the Pig, Benny the Fish & Steven the Frog:

 '

I love that Ben picked up this Pineapple and then requested that I take his picture. SUCH a poser!:

In this room our shadows changed colors!:

Sunday night we had cake and ice cream with the neighbors. Steven really hasn't had much to do with "Star Wars," he hasn't even seen the movies but has seen seen LEGO movies that have Star Wars characters and for his birthday he requested a Darth Vader cake. Tyler complied and the cake turned out pretty awesome:

I told the neighbors not to bring gifts but they didn't listen. He got an awesome remote control truck from our German neighbors and some Hot Wheels and candy from our neighbors next door.

His big gift from us and Grandma and Grandpa Brady was an electronic keyboard. He was pretty happy with it, though not surprised since he had seen it in the back of the van when we bought it...

He also got a Minecraft Calendar from us and his Grandma Brady made him a Ninjago Pillow Case cover. He is one lucky kid! Here he is cutting the cake

And here is everyone pigging out! Fun times!

I'm still in shock that Steven turns 7 this week! I forget sometimes that he's not my little boy anymore. He is reading whole books, adding double digit numbers, spouting off facts about tornadoes, attending Boy Scout events, helping me with Penny, playing Video Games like a champ, drawing awesome detailed pictures and basically just being a 7 year old. One more year and this kid gets baptized. Pure craziness!