The Kasen Date

I told Kasen that I would register him for one race this year and he picked the Jurassic 5K run at the Ogden dinosaur park. Which is perfect cause it was the week of his birthday and we made a whole date of it yesterday!

It was much hotter than the Turkey Trot we did, and had a couple big hills. So, Kasen stayed in front of me for the first mile, stayed with me the second mile and then I had to circle back for him a couple times after that. But we did it! My 23rd race. Kasen came in 14th in his age group.

Kyle bought a new treadmill this week too. The motor in our other one was slowing down to Kyle couldn't use the top speeds anymore. The speeds I use were still working just fine though... lol While I have been getting ready for this race, I usually watch America's Got Talent and let Kasen and Tai stay up to watch it with me while I run.

I also learned about making sure to trim your toe nails before you run a race! I got cuts on two different toes from my toe nails cutting into the toe next to it while I was running.

Earlier that day we got to use the voucher Kasen got with his Reflections award to go see Seussical at the Orem Hale Center Theater. It was pretty cute and Kasen said he liked it a lot. For lunch he wanted to go to Tucanos because it's all you can eat, but I told him we'd try a less expensive buffet that also had a bigger dessert bar. Chuck-a-Rama. 

I don't think we ate enough for Chuck-a-Rama to be worth it either, but oh well! Next time he said he wants to try an Asian Buffet.

I appreciated the compliment when he ate their cornbread and told me that mine is way better! He did not like their cornbread at all.

Happy Birthday week Kasen and Thank you for a fun date!

If Summer Were One Day

If summer were just one day, then this year it would be June 21st. Which is perfect because it is the official first day of summer!

I took the kids to swimming lessons at the Lehi pool, went to have free lunch at Mountain Trials Elementary with our friends and then stopped at the gas station for free Frazil Friday.

When I was first telling Kohen about swimming lessons he said he didn't want to go. "If I go under the water you will miss me!" But he has been doing so great to let his teacher help him back float and put his face in the water to swim!

Since our shark got a hole in the side of it we replaced it with a crocodile!

And invited the DeGraffenreid's and DeVaney's over to play on it for the first time.

Later that night the Gneiting's invited us over to swim and have a movie night in the backyard.

Perfect summer day right?!

Even with the giant dread lock I found out that Tai had.

The Wand of Fire

Kasen turned 9 today! And he requested a Harry Potter birthday party. We've been letting him watch the movies as soon as he finishes the book first and this year he finished reading the last book! I was trying to think of ideas of what to do for a Harry Potter party and found a girl who created a whole "Who Done It" mystery that we thought would be fun! We had to find out who had the Wand of Fire so that we could light the birthday candles on the birthday cake.

But first we had to find out which house each of the kids was in. They took a quiz and we found out that 11 of the 13 kids there were in Ravenclaw!

Then we jumped right into solving the mystery. There was a wall of potential suspects we had to eliminate and 10 clues to find out who had the Wand of Fire.

CLUE #1

The kids had to look through a bunch of envelopes to find the ones that had the pieces of the letter they needed to put together to read.

CLUE #2

I've never been so happy to have a cupboard under the stairs! This one was so fun because the kids got to use light pens to find the wizard code clues that would glow with their "light wands".

CLUE #3

We made a Diagon Alley outside, where the kids had to pop balloons to find 10 pieces of Goblin Gold and more clues telling them who else to eliminate.

CLUE #4

At platform 9 3/4 the kids had to relay through and then stack packages before the train whistle blew after 2 minutes. They then had to crack the wizard code letters on each of the boxes. I loved watching them work together to figure them out.

Kasen was especially excited that every friend that he invited was able to come!

CLUE #5 and #6

They kids had to use a magnetic wand to search for the hidden keys that each had a piece of the wizard code attached to them. Once they eliminated another person they then had to use those keys to open the locks on Hedwig's cage, after answering a trivia question.

CLUE #7

They had to find 10 escaped toads that also had wizard codes attached to them.

CLUE #8

They had to stick their hands in each book to feel what was inside. Once they knew what art supplies were in each box they used another corresponding chart to eliminate Snape.

CLUE #9

The kids had to use the Mirror of Erised to see the clues on the spines of the books and solve the equations to find out the correct order of the letters of the name of the next person to eliminate.

CLUE #10 

This one was Kasen's favorite! They had to eat 19 of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans to find out which one was missing to reveal who had the Wand of Fire!

They all started eating jelly beans faster than they were identifying them, but still somehow discovered the correct missing jelly bean!

Bentley made my day coming dressed up as Doby!

And Kyley is the real wizard MVP with this amazing cake she made! Can you believe it?!

I made the chocolate frogs with a soap mold I ordered.

Yay! The wand of fire to light the birthday candle!

And we made butter beer too! It was pretty good.

Kasen got quite a few Harry Potter legos from Grandpa Kelly, Knox, Jett and Kaisa.

Daisy gave him a book of Useless Information that he is excited about and Camden gave him Kanoodle so he can do all sorts of puzzles.

The Days gave him a fun flying ball and a paint by sticker book and he got a birthday card from Great Grandma and Grandpa Forsyth.

Kallie and Reagan got Kasen a nice Harry Potter wand and both Lyndsey and Grandma Melanie got him some Harry Potter shirts the he loves!

Thank you everyone that showed so much love to Kasen today. I think he had a good one.

We had his favorite orange chicken for dinner and I'm just glad that the planning is all over.

Happy Birthday Kasen!