Austin's 8th Birthday!

Austin turned 8 on Sunday!  

I can't believe he's already 8 years old! We had a solar system themed birthday party at our house with family on Saturday and had a great time. We love gathering our family together!

We enjoyed a yummy dinner, then let Austin open his presents.  Trevor couldn't wait and had already started ripping the paper open before the presents even got into the room.  Austin was very patient with him and let Trevor and Sarah help him open his gifts.

 Awesome photobomb by Uncle Michael!

Check out all the "Celestial Buddies" stuffed toy planets.

 Trevor decided to clean up the mess after opening gifts.

Then cake time!

We made a solar system cake!  The base cake is white almond sour cream wedding cake with light blue buttercream frosting on top. The buttercream frosting has a very thin layer of sprayed on food coloring to make it look black. The planets are chocolate cake crumbled up and then combined with buttercream frosting to make the spheres. Then each planet is decorated with sprinkles, frosting, shimmer dust, metallic food coloring spray, etc to make them each look like their respective planets.  The ring around Saturn is made of a few blue Starburst candies pulled and shaped to be long and thin to make the flat ring, then sprayed with silver shimmer spray (all edible of course).  The meteor belt between Mars and Jupiter is made of chocolate rocks.  There is a white Sixlet candy by Earth for our Moon.  The sun is golden yellow and orange piped buttercream and it is all topped off with star sprinkles!  Jupiter has its red storm and Mars has its polar ice cap!  We had fun with this one!

We even had sparkler candles on the cake!

  But they were pretty tough to blow out!

 Happy Birthday Austin!

 At 8 years old, Austin:
- is bright, funny, enthusiastic, and loving.
- he gives great spontaneous hugs and declarations of "I love you" often.  (I'm savoring these, since I'm not sure how much longer my big kid will run and hug me when he gets off the bus or tell me how much he loves me.  I'm a lucky Mommy!)
- is growing fast!  He is still tall and is growing out of his clothes too fast to keep up with!  At his 8 year old check up on 11/13, he is 52.3 inches tall (79th percentile) and 63 pounds (73rd percentile), BMI of 16.19 (59th percentile).  Growing well!  He is a great eater and very active!
- has lost many teeth and has a few open spaces in which he is still working on growing adult teeth.
- still has his big adorable dimples!  I love to see him smile!
- loves school and is very smart.  He is in 2nd grade and reads at a 4th to 5th grade level.  The goal for the Accelerated Reader program the first quarter was 10 points, and he got 124.  He gets the challenge spelling words pretty much every week and he gets pulled out for a special challenge math group.  He is excelling and enjoying learning!
- LOVES sports!  He gets very enthusiastic about whatever sport he is playing at the moment (or most recently).  This fall, he has once again been VERY excited about football!  He is frequently drawing football plays on scrap paper or writing out pretend games and rankings.  He plays football games with toy figurines, cars, dinosaurs, etc and details which toy got a touchdown or interception or ran for a certain number of yards.  He will go outside by himself and play football in the yard either on his own or with the neighbor kids.  He knows more about who is on college football teams than most of the adults I know (including sports enthusiasts) and can talk football with pretty much anybody.  He was sad when he went to bed on his birthday party day, but this time (despite ND losing on his b-day party day again this year), he was more upset about not getting to stay up to watch the rest of the game.
- fights with his siblings like any kid will, but loves them and gives them lots of hugs (sometimes too rough - like always tackling his baby brother Trevor with a hug).
- is working on having a better attitude when he doesn't get what he wants.  He is prone to stomping off and slamming doors, but has been working on these with the help of a token system in which he can earn tokens for good behavior and lose them for poor behavior.  He can work toward a reward of a set of small toys he has been wanting.
- is such a blessing to our family! We love him so much and are so happy he made us parents 8 years ago!