The Jacobs Family: Parties Galore!!!!

Well... it happened.

Tracen had a birthday!!!

And not just any birthday...

TRACEN TURNED 8!!!!

I confess I have so many thoughts to convey about this big event, but this is not the post to do that... yet.

This post is all about the...

PARTY!

PARTIES!!

I don't know about everyone else... but at our house it seems that when someone has a birthday it is not just a one day event. OH NO... the parties just keep on giving.

So I will start with his actual birthday which was on

APRIL 14TH

At our house, the birthday person gets to choose what's for dinner and their favorite dessert, that is NOT cake. Cake is for the "other" parties and I am only willing to make ONE.

So Tracen chose to have BEER ROCKS (like always) with green salad for dinner and

MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES for dessert.

You'd be amazed at the volume our little family alone can produce, or maybe not, while singing

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Then it was PRESENT TIME!

Trev: Reeses Pieces Cereal

Tate: Bag o Jelly beans

Tyler: $5 and a special note saying,

"I am sore that your presnt did not com yet. Happy Birthday.

Love, Tyler"

(yes I can spell and type-mostly)

Tyler gave him a REAL Soccer Ball a few days later

Tyler, Tate & Trev: "The BEST Boomerang EVER!!"

Mom and Dad: BOOKS!! (Of course)

The BFG by Roald Dahl

Mega Facts about SPACE

Books 1 & 2 of the Hardy Boys
The boy seriously LOVES to read!

Side Note: He is devouring the Fablehaven series right now. He started about 3 weeks ago and he just finished the 2nd book last night. These books have about 400- 500 pages each! AWESOME series by the way.

There was a soccer game and his first day of scouts that occupied the rest of the evening.

But then, on Saturday.... there was the FRIEND PARTY!!!

He is lucky enough to have a ton of friends. Unfortunately, he had to narrow it down a bit.

He wanted a NINJA TRAINING PARTY and he wanted to do said training up at our family's cabin in Eden. So we made a plan. It was going to be THE BEST PARTY EVER!!! But then... it snowed and then snowed and rained and snowed and.... well... we decided that an outdoor ninja party full of obstacle courses and 8 crazy boys in the SNOW was just not going to work all that well. So after Tracen's heart broke a little... we came up with PLAN B!

He insisted on making his own invitations. Unfortunately I didn't think to scan one of them in to perserve its greatness, but... this is the original picture he drew to go on the front.

He draws these ninjas on everything!!!! The invites really turned out pretty darn cute. But most importantly Tracen was proud of them.

Then it was on to the decorations.

I confess, I am not one of those creative and talented birthday party throwers, but I do know where Zurchers is. So this is what we came up with.

Hooray for NINJAS!!!

We decided to have all the boys meet at our house for...

Much better than Little Cesear's according to Tracen.
And of course...
CUPCAKES!

The Ninjas in Training

Presents!

Silly boy.

We then took the crew to the Classic Fun Center in Layton!!!

I so wish this picture would have turned out. I was holding a baby and in a hurry.

They were all lined up waiting for the fun to begin.

Classic.

They played at the arcade for a bit.

It was pretty serious business.

Trev sure enjoyed all the lights, sounds and goofy boys.

My job was to take pictures.

Dan's job?

Let's just say... he fit right in with the crew of 7 and 8 year olds.

Tracen was having a BLAST!

For some reason the big purple dinasaur was a BIG hit!

See how happy it can make you?

But the BEST part was when they hit..... JACKPOT!!!

The tickets just kept shooting out!!!

And then.... it was JACKPOT 2 mores times!!!

I am sure you can imagine the excitement of all those boys as they got to trade in a total of

1200 tickets

for all kinds of "cool stuff"!!!

They spent a good hour on the bounce houses perfecting their ninja training....

and then it was on to

LASER TAG!!!

They had to wait a whole 15 minutes for their turn, so they made good use of some of their prizes.

This crazy crew got to play against another birthday party of boys about the same age. I should have attempted to get some pictures of them playing, because they seriously had so much fun.

The SCORE: 16,200 to 200

Our boys ROCKED!! At least they all thought they did. :)

The "PLAN B" party turned out to be a SUCCESS!!!

Dan talks about vividly remembering his 8th birthday party and I will say that this party will definetely go down in Tracen's memories as one of the GREATEST! So much fun.

Then it was on to the FAMILY party.

This is the party that the birthday person gets to choose a CAKE for.

He wanted the cake to be red.... so he got a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting... yum.

And of course it had to have a ninja on it.

So we took a ninja that Tracen had drawn and Dan re-created it onto the cake.

Then the family arrived. Tracen is so lucky to have so much family living so close. Our home was full to the brim. AWESOME!!