Can He Really Be 11 Years Old?

How can it be?  Where does the time go?  I swear he was just my little baby, and with the blink of an eye, he is almost a teenager (or at least starting to act like one). 

Max's actual birthday is this Monday, June 21st, but with it being Fathers Day this weekend and the first weekend of summer, we decided to celebrate it a week early! Max wanted to invite a few close friends and go see the New Karate Kid movie.  We added pizza and lazer tag too to make it a birthday to remember!!!

Max has grown to be such a responsible, funny, smart, talented, happy, young man.  He is very into sports, especially basketball, football, soccer and then baseball (in that order)!  He is getting straight A's in school and he still has never gotten in trouble at school (I wish we could say the same thing at home).  His has his own business, he owns 3 vending machines, that he checks and restocks monthly.  He has more $$$ than me or Pancho ever do, because he is a true saver!  He  is also trying to outbid my cleaning lady right now.  When he found out that I pay her $60.00 he told me he could do the same thing for $30.00.  He has been cleaning my house for about 3 months now and he does an excellent job!  He fully takes care of all pets in our house (2 tortoises, 2 hamsters and a cat) because he knows that if he doesn't, they would probably go to heaven fast  (plug your ears animal lovers).  I could care less about our pets and refuse to take care of them.  Thank goodness for his kind heart :).

I love this boy more than words can say, and I thank God every day for giving him to me!

I feel so honored to be his Mom!

Max and his friends (and his brother and sister) so excited to be going to the Karate Kid Movie.  By the way, it was a good movie but about an hour too long.

Then it was over to Putters for some lazer tag!!!!

Will Ficek, Colin McCarthy, Max and Ben Hakala

The Hakalas, Ficeks and McCarthy's met us out there, for pizza and cupcakes.

So fun to have these families who have known Max since he was born!

Connor and Max

best buddies from school

Colin and Sam, also best buds!

The  "blue team"

before the Epic Battle!

waiting to find out their scores, and which team won

Grammy made her special "from scratch" cupcakes.

They are truly the best cupcakes ever!

blowing out his candles on his 11th birthday (tear)

OK, so 11 year old boys are very hard to buy for, especially Max, because he is not really into much these days.  So he ended up getting a lot of gift cards and cash.  I asked him what he wanted to buy with them, and I was actually not suprised at all when he said "I want to go to the bookstore and get some books and then I want to save the rest".  He is an avid reader, he has read the whole 39 Clues series (9 books), Percy Jackson series (4 books),and he just finished the first book in another series called The Red Pyramid.

 

Connor, Spencer, Max, Ben, Brendan and Joey

One last picture of the guys!

On the ride home, the boys all ageed that it was a "super fun" party.  I liked it because it was very easy for me and involved very little planning (especially with Grammy in charge of cupcakes - thanks mom).  Next to Christmas, this is the absolute busiest time of year for me, and most stressful.  The end of the school year is just so crazy!!!  I was just glad that Max had so much fun with his friends. He is an awesome young man that desrves to be celebrated.

P.S. I figure the Birthday Blog is a good time to brag about your child. 

Thank you for indulging me :)

PSS I conveniently left out the countless "fighting with his brother" stories . . .