Happy Birthday Gabe!

In early June, Gabriel celebrated his ninth birthday!  

We started out the day by opening his presents.  Karina loves opening presents and was almost just as excited as Gabe about starting the present opening festivities.  One of his presents was a clock and alarm that he can set by his bed.  He has said that he wakes up in the morning with the sun and doesn't know if it's 5:30am or 7am!

He also got several packs of his favorite gum flavor, Juicy Fruit.

He got a little electronics set.

He also got a Voltron Lego set which he requested.

Karina made for him a little blanket for one of his stuffed animals.

He also got this puzzle thing which you can put on your arm and it will roll down your arm.  (It's hard to explain.)

He also got a card and red envelope from Elvin's parents.

Lucky was watching the whole time but found the whole thing a little boring.

We had a mini-party for Gabe.  One of his friends came over and they played the Super Nintendo that we set up outside.  

They played for hours and hours and loved it.

Then they had cupcakes with blue frosting.

And had pizza for dinner.

We were also going to have a mini celebration the following day on Sunday after meeting with several other families for church in someone's backyard.

We nearly almost always have brigadieros for birthdays, which is a Brazilian candy traditionally served at birthday parties.

It is the consistency of fudge and the kids like to help rolling it into balls and then covering it with sprinkles.

For the piñata, Elvin opted to make one at home instead of buying one at the store since the store-bought ones always seems to fall apart with only a couple of whacks.

Elvin reinforced this one with a ton of packing tape and then decorated it with tissue paper.  It was in the shape of a balloon.  It reminded Gabe of a video game that he currently likes playing.

The next day, after church, we had more cupcakes, also with blue icing.

And then it was piñata time!  There were about twelve kids they and they all had various tries whacking at it.

The kids were originally using a broom handle and one of the bigger kids whacked the piñata with it and broke the broomstick in half!

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So then they used an axe handle (with no ax head!) and that did the job.  The kids then rushed in to collect their loot.  Unfortunately, the softer candy like the Reese's peanut butter cups were smooshed and mangled because of all the blunt force.  Many of the Smarties were pulverized.  The candy that survived were things like Starburst.

So that was Gabe's birthday.  Afterwards, he started working on his Voltron Lego set.

He also put together the chocolate moose we got him from Ikea.  It's slightly easier than the Lego set!

He also got a blow-up doll which you can punch and kick.  

Which he promptly did.

What else has he been up to?  Besides home school this past year, he had school with the school district one day a week.  But since it was online, he almost never got dressed with street clothes but attended his class in his PJs.

And in this case, his PJs and his blankie.

And when not in school, he can often be found reading a book.

He reads all the time.

And assumes many poses when reading.

Even in the evenings...

He also loves playing video games, which we need to limit.  Currently he is obsessed with a game called Bloons, in which you pop balloons that appear.

We usually only let him play about an hour a day.

 

We did sign him up for a "ninja" obstacle course camp at the local gymnastics gym.  On the last day of the 4-day camp, the parents were invited to come and watch their kids traverse the course.

He really enjoyed the challenge.

He has pretty good upper body strength and likes climbing.

In keeping with the ninja theme, he likes to take long sticks or a bo staff and twirl it around like a martial arts person.  It makes us nervous when he does this indoors.

He continues to dabble in the kitchen.  Lately he's taken to frying anything and everything in butter.  Here he is frying a slice of bread.  He will also fry other things in butter, such as salami or slices of ham.

We got some peaches that were in season and he decided to make a milkshake out of it.

It actually turns out really good.  Who would've thought?

He got a microscope from his grandpa and likes to put objects underneath to look at.  He's looked at cloth, paper, hair, and other things.  He wanted to look at spit but we told him he's not allowed to spit on things.  Also, he has a hard time closing only one of his eyes and so uses his hand to get his left eye to close. 

And he continues to do silly things...

And have crazy hairdos.

And he continues to be a snuggly boy.  He made a nest here on top of Lucky's bed.  (Which is smelly but he doesn't care.)

Or he'll snuggle directly with Lucky himself.

So there's our Gabey, now nine years old!