Michael's 12th Birthday

Guess who turned 12?  He got a raspberry pi- and a shotgun.  What more could a 12 year old want?

 Since this was an even year, he was allowed to have a party.  We gave him a lot of options for parties....roller skating, movies, but none of those seemed to be what he wanted.  He finally decided on Minute to Win It Party.  We invited all of the deacons from church and a few of his school friends, and we put together some games.  There were two teams and they competed in various games to win contests.  They had a contest to see who could  stack 15 cups the fastest.

 Using a wooden skewer, they had to stack five nuts on each other.  This was probably the trickiest challenge.

 Two boys had to get pennies out of the end of pantyhose without using anything other than their fingers.

 They had a minute to see how many dice they could stack on a tongue depressor.

 This one was called "Junk in the Trunk."  They had a tissue box with ping pong balls inside.  They had to empty the boxes by shaking their booties to empty the box.

There were lots of other games- and the boys seemed to have a lot of fun.  The prizes at the end of the night was candy!  They had 15 seconds to get what they wanted.

A little bit about Michael.  He is in 6th grade.  He still does percussion, and he enjoys it, but not the practice.  He is involved in Student Council this year, he goes to school early one day a week to help make the announcements.  He is also doing a program called Destination Imagination this year.  I don't really understand this program, but it sounds like his group meets once a week to design a solution to a problem (his problem is design something to move some people across a room).  They will create their project and then on a certain day, get together to present the solution in a competition.  That same day there will be other competitions that they compete in.  He really seems to enjoy it.  For his sport, he is doing parkour at Flips gymnastics.  Once a week he also goes running with me, we go about 1 1/2-2 miles.
He loves computers and Minecraft.  He took a programming class this summer, but didn't learn as much about programming as he had hoped.  He still loves to read too.  He enjoys his friends, and has started getting together on weekend nights to "hang out."  He really likes to roller blade right now too.
He always has interesting tidbits of information that he has gleaned from school, and he enjoys sharing those with us.  He also likes jokes.

We are very blessed to have him in our lives.