Kiddie Parties

The beauty of having pre-school age kids is that they have pre-school age friends. Right now The Princess and The Honey probably have more friends in town that The Wife and I. I'm totally ok with that because we get to attend all kinds of cool birthday parties. In Sept we went to a horse farm for Gabe's b-day. Everybody got to ride horses tour the barn and the best part. . . eat Chick-fil-A!! Yummy. Today we hit the motherload of kiddie parties. We left the house at 9:45 to head out to Chuck-e-Cheese! Lots of games and pizza and little kids running around everywhere all hoping to get a big high five from a scary rat. . . . Seriously, I'm really not sure that there is a less creepy looking mascot around. But play some happy music and boom Chuck becomes more popular than this chick! But no complaints. The Princess and The Honey each had a great time, we weren't embarrassed by either of our kids and hey . . . who complains about free pizza and games and 2 hours of your kids being entertained on someone else's dime! Thanks Louis and Casey!

After running out of tokens at CEC, we head to The Little Gym for Madison's party. Our kids made the quick transition from the sensory overload of sounds and smells of CEC to chaotic joy that only comes once you enter a large room with wall to wall 6 inch foam mats! There were uneven bars to swing on, balance beams to jump off of, hanging rings and even a blowup bounce thingy. This (as well as CEC) turned out to be a great place to have a birthday party. And as long as you are paying for it and my family is invited I definitely recommend it! 2 hours, more sugary drinks and a piece of cake later and it's home to crash for nap time. . . . another great thing about being the parent of pre-schoolers. . . NAP TIME!!!

With birthday parties on the brain.. . Seems like lots of parents go way out there for extravagant B-day parties. I guess at least for us we will be getting two for ones thanks to the close proximity of the girls b-days. They may not always like that but I guess it's either that or college. . .

I am trying to remember my most memorable. Unfortunately I can't really associate any of these with ages but I know once we took a van load of my friends down to Aunt Clairis's place because they had a pool, once I was surprised with a shaving cream fight in my back yard by all my friends, once The Wife surprised me at our house by having some people over. Then there were the back to back years of opening a diamond ring at Brightons, and getting whipped by my own belt in the Flats in front of 8 of my closest buddies!

Lastly, today is a special day for The Wife and me. It was exactly 12 years ago that I convinced her to let me take her out on our first date. Funny how I am not really a details guy, but I remember the cream pants and brown and black patterned shirt that she wore and that I wore my favorite white sweater with red and black stripes on the sleeves. I also remember that I got gnocchi at Cibo's, but that really isn't too hard to remember since I have never gone to Cibo's and not got gnocchi! We topped the last first date of my life off with some cards back home with the folks. . . . with a first date like that it's no wonder that 12 years later it still feels like we are on one really long date. And twice she has even allowed me get to second base. . . and we all know . . . .

what that got us .