Having kids has been a great excuse for playing with paper and paste and paint. For getting excited about trick-or-treating and birthday parties. I had forgotten what fun it was to suck the helium out of a ballon and sing a silly song. Being a kid is great!

My son is about to turn 7 and decided he wanted a Bionicle birthday party. For those of you who aren't familiar with Bionicles, they are Lego characters that look like robots but have this spirit world that reminds me of native Americans. For example, you have the Toa of fire, the Toa of water, etc. Alex is having his party centered around the Mask of Light. It is the 7th Toa and it will be his 7th birthday.

The party supply places don't happen to carry Bionicle anything so I am having to put my thinking cap on for this one. No themed cake at the bakery so we took a picture of him with a couple of his Bionicles and will have a picture cake. Instead of a pinata, we are going to have a "hunt for the Mask of Light". I am currently crafting the mask. We had fun with paper mache this afternoon and painted with glitter paint but it was too thin to cover the newspaper. I plan to buy gold spray paint tomorrow. That should do the job.

So we will have gold, black and red balloons, a picture cake, and a treasure hunt that will end with them finding the Mask of Light which will cover a box full of candy. Oh, my son decided that as a craft, they will all decorate their own treasure hunt bag. I have to be creative and come up with some treasure hunt clues and plan the hunt. He is so excited!

Every day he wakes up and says it is only ___ days until my birthday! I can't remember the last time I got excited about my birthday (probably my 21st). I sure am excited about his though. I'm his hero now because I know how to make a paper mache mask

I love it when I get some free time to play with them. Play dough, Legos, Lincoln Logs, Matchbox cars, it is all so much fun! We even play Barbies sometimes. Boys play a lot differently than girls. Girls like the furniture to be where it is supposed to be and the dolls to be nicely dressed. The boys seem to like to take all of the furniture out so they can stuff themselves in. They take the poor dolls, strip them naked, then start pulling limbs off.

The holidays are so much more fun with kids. We are talking about Santa a lot right now. The almost 7yr old is starting to question things but still believes. He just doesn't want to have anything to do with the department store Santas. The 3yr old is thrilled about Santa. He loves all things Christmas. I can't wait to drive around and ooh and ahh over Christmas lights.

My parents always told me the key to being a good parent is remembering what it is like to be your child's age. I am really enjoying revisiting my youth so far. I highly recommend it