Two weeks ago was Alex's birthday party. He actually turned 9 on the 24th of September which was on a Tuesday I believe. Therefore we chose to celebrate on the Saturday before his birthday. He decided he wanted his party at the bowling alley. He was very excited. He loves Ninjago, for those of you who know what Ninjago is. For those of you who don't, Ninjago is lego ninjas. So I decided to make that the theme of his party. I did a lot of Ninjago googling. To my surprise I could not find any commercial made Ninjago party supplies. I did however find many blogs with some good ideas on how to make my own Ninjago party supplies. I used Tootsie Roll lollipops to make little Ninjago characters. I wrapped red and blue tissue paper around the Tootsie pops and printed little yellow eyes off of the internet. I cut out the eyes and used a glue stick to apply them. They were very cute! I used a small glass jar with legos in it for the center piece, and tied the balloons around the top of the jar. The balloons were red, blue, white and black, the same as the Ninjago guys. I found packages of fortune cookies at Publix, and put them in the goodie bags. I printed off small Ninjago pictures and tied them around the top of the goodie bags along with a small coctail sword. I also found lego wrappers that you can wrap around minature hersey bars for sale on Ebay for about $2.50. They send you a link to your email after you purchase them and you can print them right from your own computer. I waited to late to order them so I used tissue paper and and a crayon to make a lot of the wrappers. They still looked good, but it did take a long time to make each one look like a lego. I bought paper cups in red, blue, white, and black. I printed out more Ninjago eyes and glued them on all the cups. The cake was very impresive. Winn Dixie made it for us. We took a picture of the Ninjago guys that we had printed off the computer and Winn Dixie used that to make an edible sheet that covered the top of the cake! I was a little nervous about how it was going to look, but it turned out great and all of the kids loved it- mostly the boys! They all had a great time bowling. Alex got lots of nice gifts and raked in $75.00 in birthday cash! Directly after we left the party on the way home Alex started saying he didn't feel very well. We thought he might have gotten car sick. When we arrived home all his little friends who live near us came over to see what all he got for his birthday and to give him some gifts. He put on his Ninja suit that his brothers gave him for his birthday and the next thing we knew he was burning up with a fever and went downhill from there. He was taken to the Dr. three times within a little over a week. The Dr. said he had the flu. He was throwing up and running a fever. His head hurt so bad he couldn't even stand up for a few days because it just made it hurt so much worse. He had solid red eyes in the inner corner and at the bottom of his eyes. It was very scary. The Dr. assured us it was just from throwing up and he had busted some blood vessels. It has now turned into an ear infection and he is taking medicine for that, which he hates. He went back to school this past Tuesday but still has the red eyes. All the kids in his class were amazed by his eyes but happy to see him back at school. I told him to just tell them he was a vampire, lol. Thank goodness he made it through his party and felt fine the whole time as far as we knew. He hasn't even had a chance yet to open all his birthday gifts yet. He got some peel & stick Spiderman wall stickers that we plan on putting up in his room this weekend. He loves all the superheros. I am just so glad he is feeling better and things can get back to normal now. Shockingly my older boys nor I have gotten sick. So I'm very happy about that. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I think we are out of the woods by now. I have uploaded some pictures so everyone can see how cute it all turned out.