It's All About Ty and Ashlee: EIGHT!

It's Tyler's birthday. And what does that mean?

A whole day doing whatever he wants.

And what does the birthday boy want to do?

Initially it was:

Breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts
Lunch at McDonald's
Dinner at Chick-fil-A
Play time at Chuck E. Cheese, possibly Dave & Buster's
Trips to Dick's and Target for football men and
Swimming at the gym

Whew.

It turned into most of that except we went to:

Lunch at CFA
Dinner at Applebee's (so they could sing to him, which totally embarrassed him, even though he asked for it!) and
Made trips to multiple Targets throughout the city and Toys R Us as we searched for football men, instead switching to baseball men because they were easier to find.

Grandma showed up with a big box of donuts and some early presents that put a big smile on the birthday boy's face.

He hadn't been able to open any presents yet as Ashlee went to school and daddy went to work, so he was tempted by the stack of Iowa State presents just staring at him from the mantle.

They mysteriously showed up once he got up that morning ...

Aren't we mean parents, lol! We wanted to make him wait until everyone was home!

After grandma arrived, we started our search for the football men, to no avail, and gave up - but only for the time being - and went to CFA for lunch where Justin met up with us.

From there we went to Chuck E. Cheese where Tyler earned more tickets - about 400 - than he has ever earned, or so I remember. Strangers were giving them to him as they said they "heard it was his birthday."

I really think the person who "heard" it was his birthday was dressed up as Chuck E. at one point, but I can't confirm that.

Tyler earned most of his tickets from playing Deal or No Deal and various versions of pop-a-shot - against mom, dad and Grandma. He continually had to beat his last score {always a competitor, I tell you!}.

After several hours with the Cheese, we headed back out to see if we could find the coveted football men. You see these are the latest fad at Tyler's school. The second-grade boys are trading these, and Tyler wants to make sure he has enough to trade and/or have the most among his friends.

We don't get it, but we go along with it because it makes him happy {and he's not into toys so it's an easy thing to buy for him}.

Toys R Us didn't have any, but the Target near our home had 8 or 9 bags of baseball men - no football - so we bought them all.

And started a new collection of baseball men to replace the football since those are becoming to hard to find.

It is his birthday after all.

He was so excited we had to sit in the food court and open them there so he could see what was inside! {the fun of these is that you don't know what is inside until you open them, kind of like baseball cards}.

When we got home, we placed a candle in one of grandma's donuts (we'll save the cake for his family and friend's parties) and sang happy birthday to our special boy - before we picked up Ashlee from school!

Later that night, after dinner at Applebee's, we headed home to open presents. Tyler had wanted to go swimming at the gym, but the pool was closed that night for swim lessons {bummer}.

Tyler was insistent that every present he opened was going to be socks. He likes socks so this would have been a great gift, but none of the presents were socks!