Southern Babies: 9 - Southern Olympics 2016

Let that sink in. The kids turned 9. I'm still having trouble believing it. Nine sounds old. It is way too close to double digits. I tell them to stop growing up and they won't listen! Despite the pleas to remain my cuddly little babies, their birthday came and went and they turned 9.

We had an epic birthday party. I had been planning it for 4 years! Yes - 4 years! Since the last summer Olympics. Four years ago I remember watching the Summer Olympics right after the kids' birthday and I thought that would be such a fun birthday party. I knew in 4 years they would be turning 9 and that it would be the perfect age. Old enough to enjoy but not too old to think it was dumb. I didn't ask anyone what they wanted for their party this year, I told them we were doing an Olympics party! Thankfully they embraced the idea and jumped on board quickly.  In fact a few months ago they were raring to go and wanting to get the planning started. It was quite odd because I'd never really had help planning a birthday party before! I had to tell them in June that we couldn't get started yet because of VBS. We got through that and went to the beach and then we were finally able to get started. Of course we ended up doing almost everything the last week but we got it done. And the party was epic!

July 30th was on a Saturday this year so we got to have their party on their birthday. We were planning an outside party so we did it from 10-12:30pm to try and make it slightly cooler.   We were up late the night before and up early on that Saturday.   Will joined us outside around 6:30am he was so excited to help decorate!  We had balloons for their party in their bedrooms and we put streamers on the door. I had to wake Lindy up around 7am that morning. Drew went out and got the kids donuts for their birthday.

We got everything decorated just in the nick of time and before we knew it, it was 10am and friends were arriving. We had 10 kids and it turned out to be the perfect number. As they arrived they picked a country out of a bowl and then they decorated a flag for their country. We had an opening ceremony where they all walked their flags in and Lindy ended up bringing in the torch.   We then started the 8 events. We had golf, discus, archery, soccer, hurdles, long jump, javelin and shot put. Each kid competed individually and we used the flags they had made to mark their spots in games like the discus, shot put, etc. When the events were finished we had a medal ceremony for each event. Each kid medaled so that was good! No fudging involved!   After the medal ceremonies we served the kids lunch. We had pizza and Cheetos torches and then Olympic ring cupcakes and gold medal cookies. The kids ended up with about 10 minutes left and they jumped on the trampoline before all heading home.

After they all left the kids opened presents and had a fun afternoon playing with their new toys.

Good Morning birthday boy!