April Birthdays

We have birthday buddies in our family.  Matthew and Scott's birthdays are 10 days apart, Anna and John's birthdays are only 1 day apart.  And Grant and I have birthdays 3 days apart.  Emma gets to have a birthday months away from anyone else's.  In any case if often feels like birthdays just come in pairs.  During spring break we celebrated Grant's birtthday.  He turned 10 years old.

We went to Olive Garden, at this request.  He wanted to sit between the two other big kids at the restaurant.

We had chocolate birthday cake with chocolate frosting.

And played a silly scavenger hunt game with a Mega Man theme (an old video game).  Each kid got to stand in as some of the different villains in the game - some real, some made up.  The good guy is Mega Man, many of the bad guys are some kind of "man" also like Ice Man, Lightning Man etc.  Grant had to defeat different bad guys and collect their powers.  But some powers he had to get before others.  It was fun.  Scott and I also stood in for some bad guys.

Matthew came up with the villain Football Man.  Who can defeat Football Man?  Grant had to use the lightning power he got from defeating Lightning Man.  Cause lightning beats football.

Emma wanted to be Ice Man (because Elsa) who could be defeated by Fire

She was also Bubble Man, which could be defeated by Wind or Tornado

Needle Man being defeated by Haystack powers.  Its got weird in parts.

I don't remember what bad guy Matthew was here...but we had fun.

Happy Birthday Grant!

And also it was my birthday this past week.  It was very fun and low key.  We got Chinese take out and Scott and I went out to dinner on another night as well.   And we had strawberry shortcake.

And I got a digital piano for my birthday which I have been playing almost every free moment I have until my back gets too tired from sitting there.  Alas, there are not enough free moments.  The kids also use it for their piano practice and lessons.  It is a lot better quality than our keyboard. So I'm very excited to have it!  Here is John playing a song.

Matthew likes playing on the new piano.  I enjoy playing and then get really excited as I improve at songs.  I am not actually very good - still mostly playing songs from Level 1 or Level 2 books.  But I am getting better.  And I enjoy playing.  I help the kids with their piano lesson videos and have learned a lot from the videos too - things about different chords and that its ok to take poetic (musical?) license with a song you are playing which I do all the time now.  It's fun.

And we got a new stationary bike.  I haven't been able to run for almost a year because of a hip injury.  I am going to physical therapy again and feeling hopeful that it will get better.  This physical therapist thinks its TFL/IT band syndrome - a common-ish running injury - and the things they are having me do so far seem to be effective.  So fingers crossed.  The bike has been fun and I'll continue using it even if I am able to run again soon.  The kids enjoy it too.  John has fun on it.