Celebrating 18

I can scarcely believe that our first born son is now 18! 

It was his birthday just over 3 weeks ago and there was great excitement around this special celebration.

It has been such a joy to parent him over the last 18 years and watch him grow from that first sweet baby we called ours into a young adult. A young man of good character with a wonderful sense of humour. A young man who has taught us so much as we have parented him. A young man who is a friend to many, young and old. A studious young man who has done well as he has been dedicated to schooling himself, almost independently, for the last 4 and half years. A great big brother and a son we are immensely proud of. 

We are blessed to call him "ours".

Birthday tradition in our home calls for an early morning pile up of sleepy kids on mom and dad's bed for gift opening, and there was no exception on this special day. I was fully aware that this may possibly be the last time that our now 18 year old may take part in this early morning tradition.... 

We don't know what next year may hold for him...

Being the 25th of July, we had the perfect excuse to have a Christmas in July dinner to celebrate, and hubby's mom even put up the Christmas tree! 

We enjoyed a wonderful evening together as family, and the dinner my mom in law prepared was absolutely superb! 

We reminisced about the time seventeen and half years ago that our tiny, sweet, not yet rolling baby rolled off the bed while we were enjoying a Christmas dinner around the very same table. The cute and ever so chubby toddler who loved to pretend to sell flowers to us all and always wanted to be at his Oma and Opa if he ever felt ill or unhappy. The times he spent as a little boy, eagerly helping his Opa "work" in the garage and more...

Such sweet memories and such a blessing that this was where he wanted to be on his 18th birthday.

The celebrations continued the next evening as we had around 35 guests at home for a Spiderman Party.

Why Spiderman you may ask?

When this young man was a little thing, all he wanted was a Spiderman web blaster that could shoot out webs. We never did buy that toy for him....

With him turning 18, it seemed it may be my last chance to get him that toy after all these years, and if I could have, I would have bought one for him and all his friends so they could enjoy some silly Spiderman fun!

 It turns out that this toy is rather expensive and we decided he would appreciate the cash more than the toy at 18, but if he still desperately wanted a web blaster, he was free to use the cash to get one!

He decided cash is king at this stage :)

Hence the Spiderman party that was enjoyed by the littlest cutie pies to the teens and oldies.

It was a wonderful birthday and we look forward to many more years enjoying our young adult son.