Only One More Year Until Teenagerdom! Yikes!!!

My blog has been filled with political rants as of late, and I've fallen behind in posting the more fun stuff in my life. So I'll try to write some happier thoughts in the coming days.

A few days after we returned from Hawaii in August (on Chris' actual birthday), we celebrated his 12th birthday with an all-boy, "get in the game" party. We organized some outdoor games, including a "How Well Do You Know Chris?" quiz, and some of the kids also played "Rock Band" and "Mario Kart Wii" downstairs in the family room. It was a nice group of boys and a pretty easy party all in all. Thank goodness for a nice day--that's one nice thing about having an August birthday, even though he was SUPPOSED to be born in December!

The kids puzzling over the quiz

In the end, the winner answered seven questions correctly out of a total of 21 questions! I conjectured that if they had been girls, they might have known more about Chris...but maybe that was just a sexist thing to say. However, I still think I could be right. Mike's often teasing me about my ability to gather important details about women I meet in just a few minutes. For example, the family we met in the ocean in Hawaii--while he was out snorkeling, the woman and I began talking. When he came back into the shore, I introduced him and told him that she had grown up near me (and had been living in LA for several years) and also graduated from Beaverton High School! She and her husband had two severely autistic boys, and I think she welcomed the opportunity to talk to a friendly adult face. Contrast that with our efforts to find out more about Chris' new randomly assigned locker partner. The only thing he has told us about Aidan is his name and the fact that he's hung a mini disco ball in their locker! That's it. I do think that females, on the whole, tend to be more detail oriented, especially when it comes to information about other people.

After the party, one of Chris' oldest friends, James, took the quiz and tied for first place...7 out of 21. Most of the kids didn't even seem to know that Chris was 1 lb, 6 oz at birth. I love doing these quizzes about people!

Poor Kitty, Poor Kitty, Poor Kitty

The airplane obstacle course (one player is the airplane in a blindfold, and his partner, the air traffic controller, has to navigate him on the runway so he doesn't step on any of the obstacles)--this was a popular game!)

My mom scored with her great birthday cake!