7th Birthday

 How did this happen?  How is it possible that my babies are 7?  Theyno longer look like little boys - but now like big 2nd graders.  As much as it makes me a sad that they are growing up, I love watching their personalities develop and their independence shine through.  We had a nice, low key birthday.  Nana and Grandad came into the town the day before and we enjoyed a nice morning and afternoon before their party.  After last year's Mad Science Birthday extravaganza, we decided to something easy this year and have the party at the pool.  It was much easier, but ten 7 year old boys are a bit much.  I'm not sure what we'll do next year, but I'm thinking a family trip sounds much nicer.

 Both boys are obsessed with Minecraft, so Greg and I got them Minecraft heads.

 We also gave Ryan a giant paper airplane book and some new books for Luke.

 Nana and Grandad gave the boys walkie talkies.  Ryan has really enjoyed playing with these.  He likes to walk to the bus stop by himself with his walkie talkie and check in with us along the way.

 The boys are also into Lego's Ninjago.  I made Luke a Kai cake and Ryan a Lloyd cake.  I also turned the party favor boxes in Ninjago characters.

Greg and I were very thankful that my parents were able to be there - they were supposed to come in a couple of days later.  It ended up being super helpful to have the extra set of eyes and help wrangle the kids for dinner.

 The boys have had 3 swim meets, so far.  Luke has improved his time by 20 seconds from the 1st meet to the 3rd.  Ryan has also improved his time (he's still faster than Luke, but it is now much closer). Both boys love the ribbons that they win.  We are lucky that their birthday falls into the 6 and under group, so there is not as much competition and they are at the older end of the group - if not, there would be no ribbons.  They did swim in a relay at the 2nd meet.  They had fun with that.

Two big milestones:

Luke finally lost his 1st tooth.  Ryan lost his 1st tooth over a year ago, and has lost 3 more since then - Luke has felt very left out.  His adult teeth are nearly has big as the baby teeth, so it was long overdo.  He lost his 2nd tooth last night.

Ryan and Luke finally are off their training wheels.  Most of the their classmates did that sometime during Kindergarten, or before - but that doesn't matter anymore - they can finally join in.  We've been working on it for a while, but they are both so cautious.  Luke was more willing to try, but he doesn't have the same balance as Ryan.  We had promised them new bikes for their birthday if they got off training wheels - that day came and went, but on Father's Day, we took them to the park and they finally got the confidence and balance.  We went bike shopping this week.

Happy Birthday to my sweet sweet boys!