Thomas' 13th birthday!

It's official!  We have a teenager in the house!  How did this happen?!  ;)  Seems like yesterday that he was a toddler running around the house, sucking on two fingers saying over and over his favorite word, "Car...car...car..." as he carried as many Matchbox cars in his hands that he could.  After which he would then of course place them down on a flat surface to make a parking lot to park and repark them.   And then there were the days of being a 4-6 year old where he made chains or trains of every kind--out of paperclips, paper, or toys that would take up the distance of a hallway, room, etc.  And then 7-10 years old where he would take anything and everything apart to discover the insides and how things worked (and of course played with Legos).  He would continue to explore those parts by thinking of all they ways he could play with them, like computer or printer screens, little motors, etc.  And over the past 3 years or so, he's taken those same interests and passions and has gotten even more creative with Lego building and Lego robotics, computer programming, and even movie making and editing with his sisters or stop motion animation in Minecraft or with Legos.  He loves playing outdoors, soccer, riding his bike, ripstik, roller blading, climbing trees, etc.  Thomas is a good son who is kind-hearted and aware of the needs around him.  He's learning how to navigate the We're proud of the hard worker that he is.  Self motivated in school and working toward spiritual goals for himself as well.  He is definitely learning how to assert his independence more, express his opinions and desires more, etc., so he's developing normally it seems.  ;)

Keeping with his love of tinkering and creating electronic things, we gave him a starter kit with 200 electronic components like sensors, capacitors, resistors, LED lights, breadboard, etc. This should get him through the long winter ahead. ;)

On our flight here to move to Latvia, Thomas left his Sansa mp3 player on the plane. So Savannah talked with Briant and I about paying for half of a new one for Thomas' birthday. We appreciated her thoughtfulness and generosity, as did Thomas!Rhea made Thomas some nice cards for him.

And for fun, we threw in an Incredible Hulk bouncy balloon.

After present opening, we went into the city to take Thomas to a Harry Potter Escape Room. These kinds of rooms are a new thing, and everyone loves them, so we thought we'd try it out. While we were waiting for our reservation, we ran over to see what was going on by the Freedom monument. They always have something going every weekend there, and today was a bike tournament.We enjoyed watching all of the stunts and "tricks" the guys did on their bikes!

After some time being entertained there, we ran across the street to McDonalds as this was Thomas' birthday request. No complaints on this meal!

We were finally ready to go to the escape room. This was the entrance. I don't know how Bri found it! Note: We have to take waterbottles everywhere with us because there are no drinking fountains around Riga/Latvia, so unless you want to buy expensive water bottles, you have to take your own.

The escape room was soooo fun! We loved our experience! We chose the Harry Potter one because as a family, we've been reading the Harry Potter series over the past year, and we had literally just finished the last book earlier that week! It seemed like a great way to celebrate the completion of the series. You don't need to have read the books to do the escape room, but we enjoyed it even more because of our love of the books' characters and our shared love of adventure and problem solving that is carried throughout the series.

We were doing really well finding the clues and making sense of them, but there was one we couldn't find that we got hung up on for a while (it ended up being underneath a dresser that we didn't think could be moved). The ladies in charge granted us an extra 10 minutes to allow us to see it through and actually escape. We were so grateful after an hour of working hard at it!

But to really bring the Harry Potter theme to it's climax, we went home (after we stopped at the Olympia mall and bought Thomas some cleats and shin guards for soccer for his birthday) and watched the last HP movie. As we've read the series, we have watched the correlating movie. The kids have loved seeing the book's magic and fantasy come to life on the screen even though the books are always better than the movies! We had cake and ice cream first of course. Chocolate, his favorite.Here the kids are getting ready for the movie, sitting close together. Every movie has its scary parts or parts where the kids get excited or anxious, so they sit close together to share a little more in the excitement. We have edited parts out where necessary or had Rhea close her eyes because she's younger and a little more sensitive to the scary parts. Hard to not have her included though because she has been right with the rest of us on this Harry Potter journey and she wants to be like her big siblings!Something else we arranged, but had to do on another day that wasn't actually Thomas' birthday (because the date got changed), was tour a USS James E. Williams Destroyer ship.  It was docked in Riga for a few days after visiting Norway, so the embassy set up tours for us.  Being Thomas' birthday and his love of ships and all things mechanical and transportation related, I signed us up.

We were the only ones that showed up for our tour time, so we had the whole ship and tour guide James, to ourselves!

They took us into what we felt was every room on the ship!  Here we are in the bridge of the ship where the captain is in command.

The kids of course just made themselves cozy inn the captain's chair!

And the cafeteria because the navy has to eat.  :)  I loved the board "love from the homefront" and the notes from people in the states.  These men and women have been at sea or abroad for months away from their families.
Fixing a helicopter on board.
Missels.
Guns that can be used in combat as well.

A great tour of the inside and outside workings of one of our country's destroyer ships!  We had a lot of questions, and James did a wonderful job of answering them.  The pictures don't seem to show how massive this ship was with all of the many floors and rooms it had.  The tour lasted about an hour and a half.  It was a great opportunity to see how our Navy lives and works on our ships to protect us and our freedom!