8

 We celebrated a big birthday in our house today.  For weeks now I've been getting updates on how many days it was until his birthday ... down to this afternoon when he gave me the calculation on how many more hours it was until his party.  I asked him what he was going to do after his birthday was over (thinking there wouldn't be anything left to count down.)  He told me simply, "I'm going to go to bed."

 He was pretty adamant about getting to help me make his cake this year.  He picked out a "Jeep cake" from a cake decorating book we have and was determined that we should re-create it.  We started by having him spread chocolate frosting onto our serving plate, then sprinkle crushed chocolate graham cracker crumbs on it for dirt.

 We used pre-made angel food cake loaves.  I had intended to bake cake Monday night, but he wanted to go bowling for his birthday and we found out Monday afternoon that we would have to go that night instead of Tuesday because of leagues.  So we had to compromise on the cake.

 He's been telling everyone for weeks now that he was going to have a Jeep cake with chocolate doughnut wheels and "dirty" bumpers.  (We used Pirouette cookies for the bumpers.) 

 That's him peeking out the side window.  The driver is his dad - complete with western mustache (in case you thought he was frowning).

 We had Papa and Bugga and one of his friends over for presents cake and ice cream tonight.  It was just a simple get-together since we did the bulk of the party last night (I'll get to that shortly).

 I love the look on his face in this picture.  He literally said, "What is it?"

 He was pretty excited to find out it was a pogo stick.  Of course it is snowing here tonight, so he has to wait to try it out.  We've had weather in the high 40's the past couple days and everything was melting.  I didn't even know it was supposed to snow tonight.  Oh well.  We all knew we were only in the middle of winter, and not nearing the end like many others across the country who already have trees and plants in full bloom.

 Okay, so here's the finished cake.  I think it came out really nice.

 And of course the goofy pose.  I can't take a picture of this kid without getting at least one goofy pose.

 All lit up...

 Okay, so last night we went bowling in a town about 35 miles away (the nearest bowling alley, and it's very small - only 8 lanes).  It was really nice though (as it should be since our oil rich county paid for it).  Anyway, we had a really good time.  They had a "birthday party deal" which gave us the lane for an hour, all the shoe rentals, a pizza and a pitcher of pop for $25.  We ended up adding another pitcher, a couple other snacks, and a second hour of bowling, but it was still very reasonable.  He just brought his best friend along, but they had a ton of fun, and everyone was completely exhausted by the end of the night.

 Even the three year old got into bowling.  They had a neat feature where you could choose to use bumpers for some players and not for others, and the bumpers would automatically come up when it was the players' turns.  Very cool.

 Dad brought along a package of Pop Rocks and everyone had to show them off.

 Even the three year old who previously wouldn't eat them.

 (Here the three year old is standing on his green square.  Green is his favorite color, and we needed a safe spot for him so he wouldn't be in the way or get hurt.  He kept going back to find his spot.  It was pretty cute.)

 The baby slept for the first hour, then woke up to join the party.

 This was the end score for our first game.  Obviously we stink at this.  We haven't played in about 5 years.  The first three had bumpers - our 8 year old, his friend, then the three year old.  Our daughter is the 4th player, then Dad, and I'm last on the list.

 It was pretty cool that the bowling alley kept flashing Happy Birthday animation on our scoreboard.

This was the final score of the final game (we bowled two games) with the cumulative score above the final for this game.  We took the three year old out of the mix for the second game.  One cool feature they had that I hadn't seen before was that the scoreboard also showed the speed of your ball.  We had a lot of fun and will definitely go back again.  It's very reasonably priced and very pretty.  Next time I'll take my better camera and get some shots of the decor.