Nine!

Jacob turned nine this weekend, and wanted to celebrate his big day with a Star Wars party(ies). I know, that's what I said last year! Jacob hasn't actually been obsessed with Star Wars the entire stretch between his eighth and ninth birthdays; he took a short break in there to be obsessed with other things -- I was deeply afraid for a couple of months in there that I was going to have to disappoint him by not having a Wipeout birthday party for him this year.


We started on Saturday night by hosting a few of his buddies for a sleepover party. I guess I haven't hosted a sleepover party for nine year old boys in a while forever, because I couldn't quite understand why people kept saying things like "Wow! You're brave!" and "I'm praying for you." Frankly, a sleepover for four fairly self-sufficient kids sounded WAY easier to me than filling up two hours entertaining twelve 4 year old girls with crafts.

The boys got their party favors at the start of the party:



Finally, Jacob's ultimate party dream came true, and he got to celebrate his birthday by dueling his nearest and dearest friends in an epic lightsaber battle. We actually discussed some variation of this idea last year, but negotiations broke down when Jacob did not want to limit the number of guests. And I did not want to have to go to City Hall to procure whatever permits and releases I would surely need to allow fifteen 8 year olds to beat each other with sticks on my property.

But four was a more manageable number (especially since Grammy and Granddaddy kindly took the sisters for a sleepover the same night, so David and I were able to concentrate fully on the boys).

We took the kids to Five Guys for dinner:



And then walked across the street for dessert #1:



We figured we had a lot of time to kill, so multiple dessert sessions would be acceptable.

When we got home, the boys did some more lightsaber fighting and then headed to the basement to watch the Star Wars prequel trilogy. There was some disagreement about whether to watch Episode 1 or Episode 3. (My personal choice, "none of the above," was not considered.) The movie watching went okay, as far as we could tell, although we could hear Jacob getting frustrated a couple of times because his guests were not watching the movies with the kind of silent reverence that he felt they deserved. You know, because you wouldn't want to miss any of that dialogue. As we listened to all this from upstairs, David and I started looking up movie times for Transformers II -- because hard as it might be to believe, taking 4 kids to a 10:00 p.m. showing of Transformers II was actually preferable to . . . something . . . and that something was listening to four kids bicker about the Star Wars prequel in my basement. Thankfully, their disagreements were short-lived and we didn't have to see Transformers II -- disaster averted!

After the first movie, the boys came upstairs for dessert #2 -- cupcakes:



Then went outside with some ultrasabers, which are glow-in-the-dark lightsabers (Jacob has one, and Ben brought over his three) and had a late-night saber battle. I'm sure the neighbors loved that! The boys then went back to the basement for another Star Wars movie, and eventually fell asleep watching the movie (welcome to my world, boys!). David stayed up to supervise, and I went to bed because I knew I'd be getting up early to make breakfast. But I had no idea how early -- the first friend was up at about 5:30 (and they all quickly followed). I'd say the kid who got the least amount of sleep slept from about 1 - 5:30. Needless to say, we kept the grand sleepless sleepover tradition alive!

Later on Sunday, we had another party for Jacob with the family that was in town this weekend.



We pretty much just recycled everything from last year. So certain party items, such as the stand-up Darth and Yoda, went from "utterly ridiculous" to just "ridiculous" because we got to use them two years in a row!



When we were visiting our friends in St. Louis, B loaned me an awesome vintage R2D2 cake pan, and I used it to make Jacob's cake:



Blowing out the candles:





Kisses abounded for Jacob on his big day. Here he is, not so sure about the birthday smooches he received from his sisters:



But is much happier about the one he got from his great-grandmother:



Caroline, in full party mode, playing with balloons:



Jacob had a great time opening his presents, of course!



My cute birthday boy:



I think Jacob had a great birthday. He was really happy at the end of the day, and therefore I was really happy at the end of the day. Happy birthday, Jacob!