Happy Birthday Brayden

Party time with a bunch of 12 year old boys - uughhh!!! Actually, it was a really fun party. I was really worried about how to entertain this age group, and have it be "cool" enough. As it turned out, I had many things planned, but they entertained themselves quite a lot (like the impromptu dog pile pictured below). We didn't even have to do half of the things I had planned.

We tie-died t-shirts, which turned out pretty "awesome".

But the hit of the party was when we played "wolf man". We had a bunch of nerf guns that have the lazer light on the end. We made our basement pitch black, and Ira (aka "wolfman") was hiding somewhere down there, and the goal was for the boys to tag him with their guns before he could tag them. According to the boys, it was "so intense". They could have played this game all night.
"Wolf Man" Ira. Can you imagine being in pitch black, and seeing this thing with your red beemer?
I used to love these big balloons that have the elastics on the end, and you punch them. Apparently they still have their magic, cuz the boys had a great time with them.

I can hardly believe that Brayden is the big twelve! So many wonderful things happen at this time of his life. He is old enough to be responsible to hold one of the most sacred gifts that Heavenly Father has blessed us with through modern revelation, through a prophet of God, in these latter days - the Priesthood of God. I hope he will always find himself making choices that will make him be worthy of this gift. I have such a strong testimony of the power of the priesthood, and feel so blessed to have two priesthood holders in my home. Brayden is such a special young man. I will always remember holding him in my arms for the first time, and thinking about what his future would hold. Some of those thoughts scared me, and even scare me more now that I see just how scary our world is becoming. But so many of those thoughts were of the wonderful man he would become, and he has lived up to those hopes. He has a very tender heart, and is one of the most thoughtful young men I have had the priviledge of knowing. Unfortunantly for Brayden, he also gets to "raise" and "train" his parents to be parents. We have made a lot of mistakes in parenthood, and will continue to in the future, I'm sure - but luckily for us, he is very forgiving. We love you Brayden, and are so proud of the person you are, and the man you are becoming!