A few years ago, I heard about the concept of the “golden” birthday which is when you turn the same age as the day you were born. Sadly, by the time I knew about this, mine had passed. While there is nothing particularly amazing about a golden birthday, it’s a fun little idea. Last Sunday, Logan turned 9 on the 9th of March. We didn’t intend to make this particular birthday any bigger than the previous 8. Like most of our friends, the days of the 60+ person birthday celebration at the house complete with decorations, hand-made invites, games, food etc have been over for a couple of years. These days my boys prefer to have a handful of their closest friends together for…something more intimate :)

A few weeks ago, after a day of “snowboarding” and sledding at a local hill, Logan said he wanted to take a real snowboarding lesson (not like the little stick-your-feet-in boards that we own). Brian ended up finding a snowboarding park relatively close to our house that offers birthday parties. The package included 10 kids plus the birthday boy. This ended up being quite a tall order to fill since we really didn’t want to make parents drive an hour away to sit around for the whole day while their kids went boarding. We planned to take 2 cars and drive all the kids ourselves, but we also knew that it would be hard for some parents to put us in charge when a 2-hour and helmets were involved. Logan invited 2 of his best friends who he’s known practically his whole life, Will and Adam. Adam’s mom asked if her family could tag along with their other son because it sounded like fun. This ended up being the PERFECT plan because I found out that the equipment rental and lessons didn’t necessarily have to go to the children! With Logan, his 2 buddies, assorted brothers and 4 parents…that made 10 boarders and we all joined in the fun (or the falling as it turned out for some of us). Will slept over the night before and we headed out early Sunday morning.

The staff at Raging Buffalo Snowboard and Ski Park was AMAZING! I was so stressed because we were running a bit late for our 10am scheduled lesson and I thought we might have to sit around until the 11am lesson, but when we arrived, we were assigned 2 really fun high-school boys (great for a group of little guys) who did our lesson, hung out with us all day and made the kids laugh like crazy. We also had a party coordinator and a party trailer where we could put our stuff, eat and hang out. It was such a great day! Logan had a blast and said it was the best birthday ever. Everyone woke up a little tired and sore Monday morning (Aiden now knows exactly where is quads are…must have never used them so intently before), but it was all worth it!

Breakfast before we hit the road. Brian made Logan a special cake-shaped pancake and we put a gold candle on top that we happened to have around

Equipment rental time!

In the trailer getting ready for our lesson  

 

After an hour on the beginner hill, we had a hot chocolate break complete with bags of candy for each of the boys that the owner Tiffany told us were AMAZING (I think they are called hi-chews and they were indeed delicious)

 

Logan, Will and Adam – sweaty sweaty heads!

Back in the trailer, we had pizza and the cake Logan picked out, a 7-up frosted bunt cake!

Because I was plugging my ears and closing my eyes during the “cha cha cha, o-lala” part of the birthday song, I missed the ACTUAL blowing out of the candles so Logan pretended to do it again.

The big and little boys CRACKED themselves up trying to make (ah hem) “rude” noises using their hands and arm pits. I don’t know who had more fun…the high school kids or the elementary ones!

  

They had this cool sign up on the wall for signatures. You wouldn’t believe who “came” to Logan’s party. All the boys pictured plus like…a LOT of famous soccer and football players :)

 

After lunch, we went back out for more. While the lesson was technically over, the older boys hung out and continued to help the kids. This is Brady. 

Aiden was done first and spent some quality time with Alex off to the side making snowballs.    

Brady working with Santo on his stops. He got SO close!

Logan coming off the beginner hill.

Some after-party pics to end the day

    

The “new” house was on the way back, so we stopped there and then quickly drove home, put on comfy cloths and relaxed. Logan and daddy spent some quality time playing FIFA soccer on the Xbox. Logan is wearing the tee shirt they gave him at Raging Buffalo…he later drew himself snowboarding on it with a sharpie.