Ben Turns Teenager

Yesterday my baby boy graduated into the teen years - Ben is now thirteen!

Ben is this fantastic combination of kid and big kid and teenager right now and we're having a great time of it. He still loves his unicycles, gladly accompanies his sisters to the grocery store when they want to invest their allowances in candy, and invests a terrifying amount of his own income in candy. He forgets to change his clothes, "forgets" to put away his laundry (no, none of us are falling for that one), loves Magic cards, fights waaaay too much with his sisters, has figured out that mowing the lawn is an awesome way to earn more candy money, and spent a sizeable portion of his birthday money on boxes of poppers from the fireworks store. He prefers to eat without silverware, still hasn't mastered the art of legible handwriting, and can't wait for our Weird Al concert later this month.

He's a heck of a kid.

Present time! Money, gift card, Magic cards, and...

...the perfect new unicycle helmet! Because unicyclists cannot lose time to un-aerodynamic helmets. (Steve and I have been planning to get him a TT helmet for months. We pretty much think it's the funniest idea we've ever had and can't wait for him to wear it at this year's Tour de Donut)

Lest you think that the birthday photos were taken easily, I present "The Indignant Teenager"

And "The Cheesy Grin". He finally took a decent photo once I threatened that we weren't going to the fireworks store until we got a photo I was happy with.

As previously explained, Ben hates using utensils for meals, so we thought that the perfect meal for his birthday dinner would be at the new Ethiopian restaurant in Salt Lake! In Ethiopian restaurants, you pinch off pieces of bread to eat your meal and there are no utensils at the table. Of course, in Ethiopian restaurants, the food also does not taste like pizza or hamburgers, so the boys ate nothing and the rest of us had a grand time.

And we finished off the birthday celebration at the Drive In for a double feature of Finding Dory and The BFG! The boys got pizza and churros, we all stayed up until 2 am, and a good time was had by all.

Happy birthday Ben! Welcome to the teen years!