Crawdad turns 11

 We celebrated Crawdad's 11th birthday with a family party on Friday. Can you guess what the theme was? :P

Cub admires Crawdad's new remote control helicopter.

Lightning helps open presents. :)

Crawdad was exceedingly pleased with Cub's present to him. A giant Lego spider. *shudder*

Crawdad's turn for a crazy hat. :P

Trying to learn the helicopter controls. See Cub's face just barely in the pic on the right side? See the laughter? That little helicopter has some serious drift/lift/pull/something. It was hilarious to watch them try to learn to fly it.

Maybe we'll have better luck if we get on the floor with the thing? Giggle. Actually, by the time the weekend was over, Crawdad had gotten pretty good at flying it around and landing on whatever landing pad Taz designated.

Today was Crawdad's actual birthday, and he decided bowling sounded like a fun bday activity. He got a new camera on Friday, so today he (we) played with it while we were at the bowling alley. It's a pretty neat compact, easy-to-use camera. It's also shatterproof and waterproof (Yay, Papabear, for finding one with those features! :)) and takes video. He really enjoyed breaking it in today, although we still haven't quite figured out the settings (or how to not cut off part of Cub's head, apparently :P).

They have these metal ramps that Taz can push up and use to guide her ball. Super cool. :)

She was just so cute with her little feet swinging in the chair as she waited for her turn to bowl.

Cub helping Taz line up her ramp and bowl.

Bowling alley food. :)

And then Miss Independent decided she could do the whole thing all by herself. So she would line up her own ramp and then carry her ball over and push it down independently (above). Other than making her Mama fear for her toes when she chose to use the 11 lb ball (below), she did a great job. :)

After bowling, the boys had Karate, so we picked up cupcakes for Crawdad to share with his friends.

And finally, he rounded out the day with a pasta feast of all his favorites: ravioli, tortellini, and manicotti. Happy birthday, precious boy. :)