Sam's 7th Birthday

Can you believe it - as of 5 am yesterday (Monday), Sam is 7 years old!

Sam's birthday festivities started as early as he could drag Mommy and Daddy out of bed and downstairs to open presents (which was a little after 7 am ). I'm sure that you all will be very surprised to hear about his presents - Legos! Aunt Susie and Uncle Chris sent 2 supercool sets, Mommy and Daddy pitched in with the Motorized Walking AT-AT, and when Gramma and Poppop's luggage finally arrived Monday night (nobody can lose luggage like they can!) a Droid Transporter and Pirates of the Caribbean bath supplies! Wow. Ben also pitched in with an assortment of Sam's favorites: a red playground ball, a box of fortune cookies, and the board game Mastermind. Leave it to a brother to pick out such great presents. And Grammy, Buddy, and Poppoppop gave Sam a Snap Circuits Extreme set when they visited last week (yes, I'm behind in the blogging)! It was quite the birthday morning.

So, while Daddy worked (President's Day is a big ski day), Mommy, Gramma, and Poppop stayed home to hang with the birthday boy and, of course, assemble Legos! The AT-AT Walker proved a formidable challenge, I'll admit, but Steve and I finally conquered it at midnight last night. And man is that thing cool! Those Lego people come up with the most amazing designs - the Walker walks forward and backwards and moves its head with deadly precision. I'm just glad that we have a Lego Luke Skywalker to throw a thermal detonator into its belly to protect us. As Sam demonstrated it to his friends, the catch phrase was "Prepare for your eyes to be amazed!" And they were, oh yes, they were.

And the day of joy ended with dinner at Sam's favorite restaurant - Tucanos! I know, an all-you-can-eat meat joint is an odd choice for a boy who is a veritable vegetarian (except for hot dogs and chicken nuggets), but Sam goes crazy for the "cheesy balls" (cheese bread ball appetizer thingies) and requested Tucanos for his birthday dinner. It was fantastic, as always. Sam ate so many cheesy balls that he didn't even have space left in his tummy for ice cream!

And today was Sam's birthday party. Aunt Sarah got Sam a set of Snap Circuits for Christmas, which, despite the unbelievably bad website, is a really cool product. It's like a solderless circuit board, like a breadboard, made for kids where the pieces snap together to create projects. Ok, it's hard to describe, but Sam decided that he wanted to have a Snap Circuits birthday party, so Steve found several cool little electronics projects for kids and we had a great time today playing with batteries and light bulbs and electromagnets and even making speakers out of Styrofoam plates. Yep, Sam is destined to be as cool as his Daddy :)

Happy Birthday, Sam!