It's great to be eight!

Jonathan's birthday was last month and I think it just may have been the best birthday ever.

We started out with a trip to the Planetarium. Do I even need to say that? Of course we went to the Planetarium, that's what you do on birthdays. We hadn't been in a little while and they had made a few changes in our absence.

First new exhibit was the cloud maker.


It was pretty cool and the boys agreed. Brigham eventually thought it was cool, once I put his hand in to show that it wasn't dangerous.


The second new exhibit was the lightning ball thingy. I honestly don't know what they're called so I hope you know what I'm talking about. There were a lot of other kids around putting their hands on it which kind of made the lightning not as impressive. Perhaps next time we'll get a better look.


We finally got to see Secret of the Cardboard Rocket. We haven't seen it in ages because they stopped showing it on Saturdays and then they stopped showing it during the summer. Well, it's back and it's on Saturdays so we're all very excited.


Gotta get a picture on the moon.


Jonathan's favorite planet.


Another new exhibit was this life-size model of the Mars rover Spirit. Pretty cool!

Jonathan was especially excited to pick out a present in the Planetarium store. So many cool things to choose from. In the end he decided to get a solar system model kit. The kind that you have to assemble and paint yourself. I was a little concerned with how this would go since Jonathan never seemed to have the patience to color pictures, let alone whole spheres.


He got right on it when we got home. I did end up helping him for the finer detailed work but he did great and had a lot of fun painting.


He loves it and it even came with glow-in-the-dark paint so it's even better!

That night he opened his other presents and we had treats.

More planets to paint! I didn't plan it that way. We got these for Jonathan's cousin for Christmas a couple years ago but we changed our minds and it's been kicking around for a while so we just decided to give it to Jonathan.


This awesome tent/tunnel combo is something that I've wanted to get him for a long time.


He and Brigham both thought it was pretty fun and it stayed up in our family room for a while.


Jonathan had a great birthday. He had been looking forward to it for a long time and when it was over he was genuinely sad. Jonathan is a happy kid and I'm so glad he is in our family. Happy Birthday, Jonathan!