Avery's 7th Birthday

On December 1st my first baby turned a whole 7 years old! We celebrated that night as usual with a family dinner out to eat, his choice Red Robin of course, and his birthday party a few days later.

It was another Transformer party. We played pin the autobot symbol on Bumblebee.


Being the birthday boy and going first is sort of a raw deal because you can't feel where anyone else has placed theirs to get oriented.


The boys thought his skills lacking, but just wait until they go!


And for good measure here's another shot of most of Avery's friends who were there.


Emmett has a turn


Carson has a turn, but it's Nicholas who nailed the sign perfectly on Bumblebee's chest.


Autobot, Autobot, Decepticon!


An Optimus Prime pull sting pinata.


The strings were kind of hard to get off. Carson was particularly funny.


Mad candy dash!


Time for presents!


After all the friend gifts it was time to open Mom and Dad's. For as long as we can remember Avery has been obsessive about money. For a while now he's really big into gold. One of his favorite shows is Gold Rush on Discovery, and now he and Dad also watch Gold Fever on the Outdoor channel which apparently Travis grew up watching. (PS: one of Travis' dental assistants just saw the Hoffman's from Gold Rush at our Red Robin's just a couple days ago. She said they were just as trashy there as they are on tv.)
Anyway, so for Avery's birthday we got him a gold pan, a big bucket to pan with, pay dirt, and some sand bags from Home Depot to practice on. Actually, on Gold Fever they saw you can get a $2 bag of sand from Home Depot and come up with as much as $20-30 of gold in it. The guy on the show did that when he was in California though, and I'm sure it makes a difference which quarry your local Home Depot's sand is shipped from. Not to mention just panning that is a lot of time for not a lot of return.


Avery knew exactly what he got but was left so speechless with joy that Travis kept prompting him with, "Well, Avery, what is that?"


Time for cake! Avery's aunt Angela made his cake again, a giant Optimus Prime bust. That was A LOT of cake. We had less than the #7 shoulder during his party.






That night, Avery couldn't wait to try out panning! Dad demonstrates.


And Avery gives it a try.


He was super in to it.


He's done it several times since then and has also run dirt through a sluice box that Travis beefed up from one he had made a long time ago and I never knew about that's been sitting in his Dad's shop.
Avery wants to run dirt all the time now. All the effort and time it takes doesn't phase him at all.

Sunday night we had a joint birthday party with cousin Alli with the family. Grandma and Papa found a big hit with this toy and the Human Body book that Grandma and Grandpa Benjamin got Avery was a necessary read that night and lots of reads since.


As for Avery's stats as a new 7 year old, it's the same story: he's still tall and skinny with 90% weight but off the chart tall.

Happy Birthday Avery!