The Young and the Restless

Eight

Birthday posts always give me anxiety.  I feel so much pressure to list every single one of their amazing qualities and so eloquently state why being their mother is the best job in the world.  The truth is, there's no way I can do that in just one post.  Especially when it comes to Jayden.  The boy who is so genuinely and uniquely one of a kind.  He can drive my crazy one minute with his extreme electronics addiction and then melt my heart the next when he sneaks down the stairs to give me just one more good night kiss.  He is blunt and bold, confident and cocky, hard headed and soft hearted, determined and driven, witty and wild.  We hope you had a wonderful birthday, Jayden, all three days of it.  We sure love you!!  For his party Jason and his friend, Shawn took all the boys to see "Diary of  Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" (which he innocently called "Diarrhea of a Wimpy Kid" for like a week before I finally decided to correct him), then back for pizza, swimming, presents, cupcakes ice-cream and lots of screaming.  Cute boys, fun times and a birthday boy who ran around with a perma-grin all day long.

This was the year of the nerf guns and it was pretty entertaining to watch Jason and the kids run through the house having a nerf war that evening.  Entertaining because Jason and Jayden are two of the most competitive people I know. Revenge was the name of the game.

His cousin Brenton got a remote control truck when we celebrated his birthday here, so that went straight to the top of his wish list.  I'm enjoying the wii and computer hiatus for as long as I can.

Then Sunday we celebrated his actual birthday by dragging him out of bed for 8:00 church, coming home for a strawberry crepe breakfast then mom and dad deciding that it was Sunday nap time while the kids ran wild.  We woke up to the door bell and our sweet Primary President at the door in her cute little pinterest outfit, holding her cute little pinterest number 8 sugar cookie. I tried to flatten down my rat nest bed head, wipe my smeared make up off, kick all the toys back in the toy room and pretend like I really did remember she was coming and that we really don't leave the kids unsupervised for hours while I'm totally unconsious.  She was so cute and talked to Jayden all about his baptism.  He didn't know a single answer to any of her baptism questions, of course, but you could see in his eyes how excited he was about it and that he knew how much Sis. Ray loved him.  I love her for that.  Then we hosted the minority dinner at our house with Papa Murphey's pizza that we picked up the night before (why do I feel the need to clarify that we didn't break the sabbath??) and he was so excited to celebrate with his friends.

Monday was McDonald's for lunch and donuts for his class.  Three days of celebrating made for one tired mama and one happy eight year old boy. It's a good thing I love you so much.