Jake is 11!

The end of December brought Jake's birthday around.  This kid thought the week had been the BOMB!  Here was his schedule:

12/22 - open presents
12/24 - open presents
12/25 - open presents
12/27 - open presents
12/28 - open presents
1/5 - open presents

We were given strict instructions for his birthday:  He did not wish to be woken up prior to 9am.  He also did not want to sleep later than 9:30am.  He wanted donuts for breakfast followed by opening his presents in the morning rather than at night.

Somewhere between our allotted time we had breakfast and he ripped into his pile of gifts...

The presents he opened were from his Iowa family and the three of us.

Jake LOVES wearing a robe in the mornings or when he's having a pajama day.  Let me stress...he loves wearing his robe.  However, it was old and small and looked like a tiger (or someone's dog???) had ripped it to shreds in the back.  He was only too happy to receive a new one...and one with a hood!!

His other gift from us was a new Lego set.  The box was so big (and our wrapping paper supply so small) that we wrapped a small gift with instructions inside to look in the bookcase to find his gift.

This fall we purchased skis for all of us and Jake had been itching to get on the slopes.  We offered some ideas for skiing and Jake opted for night skiing.  Off we went!

We had a super night!  The weather was gorgeous and we rarely headed inside to warm up!

 Jake told us he wanted to go off the jumps beforehand.  We told him that wasn't his wisest course of action; we wanted to see him ski first and get used to being back on these contraptions a year after his lessons.  Once we saw him skiing Mike and Jake headed over to the free-style area where Jake worked on the smaller "mounds".  He was pretty excited to get better and better each time going over these.

I offered to record his attempts...it took a couple tries, but I finally got it.  It won't win any Oscars, (and if you get motion sickness, skip it) but my favorite part is the very end...

To be honest, after watching the video he was really upset.  He said he felt like he was flying through the air, but as it turns out, he was barely getting off the ground.

On the last run of the night we all got to the top and headed down the hill.  Maddie, Mike and I got to the bottom and turned around wondering where Jake was; he had been right behind us.  We suddenly realized that the kid skiing down the hill heading for a 6 foot jump was Jake.  There wasn't anything we could do except hold our breath.

He got to the jump - FLEW into the air - and landed....and then fell back on his butt and back.  We were all just about to cheer and had our hands in the air - it was a little crushing for all of us, I think.

He skied over to us and we all relived the craziness of him almost landing it - then we informed him he wasn't going over ANY jumps/mounds until he had a helmet to wear.

A week later his Minnesota family came over for a celebration -

He went through the "spanking machine" where he gets paddled as many times as anyone can get him.

Sometimes knees are locked to trap the birthday person and sometimes he gets sat upon and whomped...

Dairy Queen cake followed and we all sat to cheer the Vikings on to victory...or not, as the case turned out to be.

I think he had a pretty good set of birthdays and he's already wondering when we are going skiing again.  Not before a trip to the local store though for some headgear!