Happy Birthday, Jimmy!

Another year has flown by and London has grown by leaps and bounds!

London at 7

London at 8

I can't believe my little guy is now 8 years old!

I started asking him a few weeks ago about planning a birthday party, but he said that he didn't want one. 

Well, that just led me to a wonderful idea for his birthday instead!  A few weeks ago, I was at Outdoor Rec on Kadena and saw the sign for paintball...and low and behold, the minimum age was 8!  Oh, boy would London like that!

So Stevie, along with our neighbor Eric and Cannon's friend, Marc, and his dad, Mike, headed out on the morning of London's birthday for a round of paintball!  Kadena has this huge outdoor wooded area that they've converted into a paintball range where all the action goes down. 

London, learning how to shoot.

The motley crew

Needless to say, there are some serious paintball players around here.  I mean, think of all the military guys that are trained to really shoot in the woods.  So when they saw our motley birthday party crew, they probably thought they were going to have some easy pickins!

Stevie tells great stories about the day - about how he and Cannon hooked up with two Marines and they stormed a hill, laying down cover for each twosome to climb up the hill - a shoot and scoot.  And how there was a bunker in the middle of the road which Stevie made a run for and then London had to join him in a hail fire of paint balls, but only got hit in the foot about 5 yards from the bunker!  And the best was how Stevie was getting fired at by some Marine who was trying to capture the flag and London jumped up from behind Stevie and shot the Marine twice square in the chest.  You know that wasn't a happy guy when he realized he's been "killed" by an eight year old!

Yes, they definitely had fun, but the day was definitely not without its share of injuries.  This is Cannon's back!  And Mike took one in the neck that must have been really painful.  But these just added to their tales as they proudly flaunted their "war wounds".

Later in the day, he got to open presents and then that night, after a dinner of Daddy's famous hamburgers, we had some of the neighbors over for cake.  The cake?  A trash can, as designed by his brother.  Why a trash can?  Because that's the way our London eats!

Happy Birthday, London!