Zach's 7th Birthday

Pre-party clowning around with mom

Soon after his 6th birthday, Zach declared he wanted a LEGO party for his 7th birthday party.  Me being, well... a mom, put it off as, "yes, yes, that's a whole year away."  Well, Kindergarten graduation, a move to a different part of the country and a new school later, the promised LEGO party was upon me.
Friday was his official school party celebration, so we ordered cupcakes from the local 'peanut free' bakery and sent them to school.  I was hoping to go in and take a few pictures of him during his snack/birthday treat time, but that's not encouraged, so I had to settle for a picture of the cupcakes:-)
Saturday morning we hosted a LEGO birthday party for 10 of his school friends (all boys).  The party planners had neat games for the kids to play.  They first built a LEGO man/machine/contraption and raced them down a zip line.  The zip line was between two openings in our living room.  The kids had to think about how they weighted their individual creations.  Zach won with a 3 second time.  I'm sure it wasn't rigged?!  The birthday boy won!

Other party games included transporting various LEGO pieces (individual and larger designed pieces) from one side of the room to the other, depositing them in a bowl.  They worked in teams of two.  All was going well until I started hearing "you cheated".  Uh oh.  Some were using their hands, some would drop pieces, but pick them back up and continue instead of starting over.  Oh well, I'm just glad I wasn't in charge of this part of the party:-)  For the finale, the boys made LEGO catapults and flung their 'men' or whatever they could find across the room.  That was a blast for the kids.  

We moved on to pizza and cake, but we switched it up a bit and had cake first, then, yummy, yummy Luciano's pizza.  Anyone for creme and real strawberries in the filling?  Mmm.

Zach's LEGO cake

I think he is one happy 7...going on 35 year old.  

After enjoying their treats on the front porch, we all took advantage of the lovely day.  We asked the boys to bring a remote control car if they had one so they could have an Autocross in our driveway.  Chaos ensued, but who cares. Those boys had so much fun spending a sunny Saturday afternoon together.  You can't beat LEGOs and cars when you are 7.  I guess they never grow out of it seeing that we had a couple of dad's, Dave included, taking over the cars at one point.  Boys and their toys.

Presents!  Zach enjoyed each and every one of them.  He opened each one and lined it up, then as the weekend progressed, opened each box one by one as he put the LEGO together, played with the magic kit or whatever he opened.  Very mature of him:-)

Mom with her 7 and 8 year old babies.

Sunday morning arrived and it was officially Zach's 7th birthday, March 25.  He had a shiny new 'big kid' aluminum bike waiting on him.  We bought it from the local bike shop in town, so Zach actually had to try it out last week.  He biked around a portion of downtown on the bike and fell in love with it.  Of course, we had to wait on his official birthday, so he had almost forgotten about it with all of the party and toy hubbub.  Let's just say, he was one proud kid to have the new bike.  The weather was uncertain Sunday, but we lucked out and rode bikes to downtown and on to the park.  This new bike will take us to school and back many times over the next several months.  Yes, several....our school is not out until June 22!  Let's not talk about that, though.

As promised, we took him to Zepplin Hobby store on Sunday.  They have a huge racetrack for RC cars.  Dave and Zach spent some time racing, not to mention the time on The Grid, at home on the PS3.  It was an all out LEGO/racing weekend.

Zach opened his birthday cards (containing money) on Sunday night.  He has been saving up for the LEGO Death Star seeing that it is a very, very expensive LEGO.  He counted all of the money he has saved from his allowance and birthday and came up with close to $350.  He kept saying "I can't believe it, I can't believe how much money I have saved."  I love his attitude toward saving money, whereas Olivia will spend her money at a whim.  I think she has learned her lesson on this, but we'll see.  Back to Zach....he was tossing and turning and saying how excited he was, then all of a sudden he said, "I knew it!  I knew I was meant to be a billionaire!"  Oh, my boy.  The conversation turned to college, the importance of college and how expensive a good college cost.  All of these topics were brought up by Zach.  He was concerned about how much we are saving for his college.  Come on, Zachie, don't worry about it just yet!  He says he wants to go to a great college and be a billionaire.  There's a college major for that, right?!  

And that sums Zach up at the ripe old age of seven.  He always knew he would be a billionaire, and that, our dear Zach, is within YOUR reach.  We love you.