Daniel's 9th Birthday

The boys each get to have a friend birthday party every other year.  This year is Daniel's turn.  He celebrated his 9th birthday with 8 of his friends at a video game competion party with a football field cake and Giant's decorations.  He's really into football right now!

 Dad led the video game competition with help from another dad. 

 He got lots of really cool presents from his friends....

 Time for the prizes for the competition (everyone got a prize! )

Although the party was crazy loud all the boys got along really well.  There were several boys from church, one from Paul and Daniel's soccer team, one neighbor boy and one boy from Daniel's class.  I was really glad that the boy from his class (sitting in the front in this picture) came to the party.  Even though we live nearby the school and so do most of the other kids in his class we haven't really made any connections with other kids and parents in his class.  When I go to pick up Daniel from school none of the other parents seem interested in talking or getting to know other parents.  Aiden and Daniel get along well in class and it was nice to meet and get to know his Dad a little.  Now when I go to pick up Daniel I have someone to talk to while we're waiting.  Hopefully we'll have other opportunities to get to know this family more and some of the other families. 

 Later that night we had Daniel open his presents from family. 

 While Daniel was celebrating his birthday with his friends Jae was competing with his Lego League team.  This is a group of (mostly) homeschoolers who have been working on a Lego robot and learning about skull surgery this school year.  They've had to learn about programing the robot.  All the teams at the competition had to demonstrate thier robot (which was supposed to help with some sort of surgery) and give a presentation of some sort of surgery.  Jae's team won 2nd place (out of 40 teams) for the best robot and did well on thier presentation as well.  They will go on to the next level of competition at the Javits Center in Manhattan in March.  Pretty exciting!