Kyle's Birthday Party

I know. I know. This was a week ago and I'm just now posting on it.

Sorry to disappoint, but I also don't have any of the pictures from it yet, either. So I'll be posting a slideshow in the near future so everyone can see pictures from the day. We also took a good deal of video, so hopefully I can get some of that up here as well.

Now that all the disclaimers are out of the way....about Kyle's birthday party...

It ended up being a very nice day. Not too hot (by Arizona standards). We had a big Elmo's World jumper, complete with basketball hoop and slide. The kids had a great time on that. Well, except for the birthday boy who didn't really start to enjoy it until a while after everyone had left.

We managed to get him in the jumper a few times during the day, but he didn't want to jump. He preferred to sit on someone's lap and not bounce. He started to turn things around after going down the slide a few times. He went down the slide with McKenzie, then with Daddy, then with Kylie and so on. But he still didn't like the bouncing part.

Grandma's house was decorated with lots of balloons, various Thomas & Friends decor and a really nice Thomas the Tank Engine cake, made by Grandma of course. We even had a Thomas pinata. So, the Elmo's World jumper was a little out of place with all the Thomas-themed stuff everywhere. But, they didn't have a Thomas jumper, so this was the next best thing.

The kids played outside on the Elmo jumper, the swing set, the slide and just generally running rampant around the yard. We all gathered around to sing "Happy Birthday" (Kyle sang along, too). Then it was pinata time! The kids had lots of fun bashing the Thomas pinata. The disadvantage seemed to be with whomever was doing the hitting....as candy fell out, the other kids rushed in to grab it. When all was said and done, though, they all got a fair amount.

Presents were fun. Kyle seemed to pay attention to the first couple of presents and even helped a little bit with opening them. His cousin Nate was a big help with opening presents, too. Of course, it didn't take long before Mommy was pretty much opening all of them and the room was pretty much running on a heavy dose of chaos.

Finally, Kyle was brought into the front room to see his new train table with the setup that Daddy and Al (pronounced "Owl" by Kyle) built for him. Then there were about six kiddos pushing and shoving around the table all trying to play with it. As time went on, more and more kids had to go home until we finally had to pry Kyle away from the table (not a fun scene to watch) so we could break it down and load it into the van.

At the end of the day, Kyle finally wanted to spend some time bouncing in the Elmo jumper and had Daddy in there with him, then Mommy did her sortie into the jumper and finally, Grammy had to go in. I say "had to" for two reasons. First, Grammy wasn't all that excited about getting in and out of the jumper and, second, Kyle can be very insistent about who he wants where at a given time...and right then, Grammy needed to be the one in there with him.

It was a good, fun day. Everyone seemed to have fun. Though, I think we've decided that for next year, we're going to Chucky Cheese!!