If you can believe it, L turned TEN in February. I can hardly believe it myself, but he does seem so big and grown up all the sudden..We didn't do a friend party this year (although we considered doing the dodgeball party from last year again, since that was super cheap and so much fun...) Instead, we had our usual family party, went out to dinner @ the restaurant of L's choice, and spent the day as a family (L got to bring a friend) at Coco Key, an indoor water park in Omaha.
We usually do a theme, even for our family parties (because I'm a nut. T's is going to be construction - when I asked him what kind of party he wanted, he said he wanted a DIRT party. Awesome.) But this year we just went with TEN as our theme.
He got 10 balloons:
And since 10 is a pretty big deal, we decided to do TEN birthday presents.
They were mostly small - 10 candy bars (two large ones that were $1 each, then 8 Reeses peanut butter cups that came in a pack for $1; a big canister of Doritos to keep all to himself - or stuff we were doing anyway, like his birthday dinner. The first gift, which we gave him at the party, was a pack of 10 coupons. 
They were for things like getting out of a chore, an afternoon of time alone with mom or dad doing the activity of his choosing, an extra hour of media time, a family movie night, etc. He was SUPER excited about that gift, and has loved using the coupons - I should totally have done this earlier.
He loved all his gifts, but especially those with a Vikings theme - that will definitely be what I remember this year as - the year of the Vikings. He got a Vikings jersey from Grandma & Grandpa, a Vikings bean bag cover from Omi & Opi, and THIS from Aunt B...
She made it for his room (which is a sports theme), but it's still in the living room, hanging on the inside of the front door. As if it wasn't cool enough as is, look what's on the other side:
So it was an awesome birthday, and we are 3 years away from the teenage years (only 1 +3 months from middle school.) Yikes.
