Spencer's 16!!!

You know what's great about having a child born in the year 2000? It's really easy to figure out their age.  And since this is the year 2016, Spencer turned 16! 

For his birthday, he wanted to go backpacking with Dave. How cool is that?! I'll post some of those pictures later. They went to Big Sur, hiked up a steep mountain, camped at the top, and hiked back down the next day, stopping at waterfalls and tidepools on the way home. On his actual birthday, we ate Panda Express for dinner, opened presents, and had a couple friends over to eat cake and watch Star Wars. About the maple syrup, the real stuff is his favorite. I don't buy it because it's expensive and we go through a lot of syrup around here. But every once in a while I buy it for him as a gift, and that makes him happy.

We got him a slackline for his birthday. His cousin has a couple of them, and he's been wanting one.

 He wanted to do it right away; we went to an open space with trees, and everyone tried it.

 It's hard at first, but he picked it up pretty quickly. 

Spencer bought the Pogo stick for Brennan and Levi for Christmas. It's been a huge hit! They count how many jumps they can do in a row, and it used to be around 10 or 20. Today Levi got 110 and Brennan got 1200!!

I love this picture of Dallin chasing Chloe! Big brothers are so fun!! 

If you can't slackline, just hang from it like a monkey. 

We love this little open space! It's only about a block away, and it's nice and shady. Spencer, Tyler and Dallin went there after school to take turns slacklining and doing homework. 

Jacob gave Spencer a counterclockwise watch, which is funny because Spencer is a little OCD about things being clockwise. Random things, like when we go around in a circle to read scriptures. 

Then we went home and ate lemon lime refrigerator cake.  He requested no singing/candles this time.

A couple days later we had family over. It was also Kate's birthday party - she turned 2.  

 Another lemon lime refrigerator cake. This time with 16 candles on it.

Apparently Kate does NOT like candles, and she didn't want to blow them out. Luckily there were plenty of people willing to do it for her.

Spencer got a very special gift from an elderly lady at church. She gave him a 98 year old church hymn book. We only recognize a few of the hymns. She said she gave it to him because of all the hard work he has put into learning the piano and playing the organ in church.

 Spencer's favorite gift of the day - finding out he's taller than dad! That book is definitely slanted!

Such a sweet picture! 

Opening presents... 

I love Kate's face in this one!

She doesn't hold still long, but I managed to get a couple of pictures of the birthday girl!

Playing Jazzminton. It's like badminton without the net. Fun! 

They had fun playing a game Tyler organized. It's a combination of pictionary and telephone. He saw it at Target and thought, we don't need to buy that, we can just do it ourselves! So he uses charades cards instead. One person looks at the card, draws it, passes their drawing to the next person, he draws what he thinks it is, etc, all around the room. It gets pretty funny! 

I'll close with a few things about Spencer. He likes hiking, camping, listening to music, earning money, rock climbing,  learning new instruments, making jokes and puns (his friends tell him he should write a book about the art of making puns), driving (he just got his license, woohoo!), riding roller coasters, telling me about his day, and playing Star Wars Battlefront. My heart swells with joy whenever he plays the organ in church. 

He is the best big brother! He is extremely protective of the little ones and does fun things with them. He's great at organizing and rallying the troops. It's hard to believe he is halfway through high school already. The time is going by way too fast.