Happy Birthday Nicho!

My nephew Nicholas celebrated his 9th birthday this weekend. I can't believe he's 9 already! His birthday has extra special meaning for me, since the day he was born was also the same day I found out I was pregnant with Emily. So that means that's been 9 years too! So hard to believe!!

His party was at Firkin & Kegler's in Waterford Lakes. We've never been in there before, so we were all excited to finally go! It was fun to watch all the kids bowl together and cheer for each other.

We stopped on the way to get a balloon for Emily, but she was much more impressed with the ginormous balloon Aunt Nayeli had waiting for her! :)

Here's Austin and Lorenzo helping Madi bowl...although from this angle, I can't tell if Austin is actually helping her, or if he's watching the race up on the giant screen. ;)

Nicho and his cookie cake (and one for his daddy Steve, since the party was on Steve's birthday). His candle was a sparkler in the shape of a number 9. It was really cool, but it went on forever and put out a ton of smoke! I think if he'd been turning 10, we probably would've set off the smoke alarms. :)

Once the kids were done eating pizza and bowling, they ran off to the arcade. Before we headed over there, Madi sweet talked Aunt Nayeli into tying the balloons on her wrist. She was all excited until Austin made a joke about her flying away, then she started to panic, lol. But we quickly reassured her and then she was fine. She even wanted Daddy to pretend she was flying. :)

Each of the kids got $3 to spend in the arcade, and there weren't many games for little kids to play. So Madi did a couple of Ski Ball games, but she kept whipping the ball into other lanes (and toward other people). We went to find something else and she spotted an electronic Wheel of Fortune game. For 50 cents, you got one spin, then you got to guess three letters using R S T L N E. Your spin was multiplied times the number of letters you got. Then you had something like 20 seconds to guess the puzzle in order to get that number of tickets. Well, Madi hits the button to spin the wheel, and it lands on 200! The highest number on the wheel. The clue was "Occupation," and I guessed E (1 of those), R (2 of those), and N (2 of those). So 5 letters times 200 is 1,000 tickets if we guessed it correctly...and we did! "National Security Advisor!" Good thing the tickets are all electronically "deposited" on your game card now!

Madi wound up with 1200 tickets to spend from just $3 in games! We had to really help her choose what to spend them on, or we would've wound up coming home with 17 whoopee cushions. :) She needed a bag to carry all her loot...candy, sticky lizards, pull back racing cars, bracelets, and a 4 pack of Hello Kitty lip gloss.

Her cousins couldn't believe how many tickets she got, and when we were leaving, I saw them all sitting at the Wheel of Fortune game, hoping for a jackpot like hers. :) We had a fun afternoon, and on the way out, we made one more stop for mini-bowling. Tiny pins, tiny ball, and tiny lanes...she loved it!