With a title like that, why bother writing anything else?
Right?
The month of June is over, marking the fact that a whole bunch of kids are now a year older!
Nephew Milo has had a love of ping pongs and ping pong paddles since, well … I remember him just learning to walk, wobbling around with a ping pong paddle. Not doing anything but holding it. Then when he started talking, he would say, “Ping pong paddle!” clear as day. Just one of those things where everything lined up in the universe when he first saw them and he fell in love with ping pongs and ping pong paddles.
Given that love, his mother decided the theme for his 2nd birthday party would be ping pong. All the food was in the shape of a ping pong — even the cake. Mini pita bread on popsicle sticks were the ping pong paddles and every adult had to play in the “tournament,” with the winner being judged by the kids — and bribing of the judges was encouraged.
Somehow Uncle Tony “won” the tournament. We were all so surprised.
The next birthday party was for my friend, Grace’s daughter, Mia, who turned 4. (Can someone tell me how all the commas are supposed to go in that sentence? Nina?) For the most part, Mia has had an undying love for all things that are bug related. Snails, roly-polys, ants, flowers, spiders… they’re all her friends. Much to her mother’s chagrin. This past year or so, she’s also developed an affection for Tinkerbell. Who knew Tinkerbell also loved Mia?
And the balloon artist? This guy was really good. Not only with his balloon creations, but with the kids. I found myself entertained by him, and could have watched him create balloon creatures for hours.
After Mia’s party, we headed over to get gas, and on a whim, decided to stroll through the strip mall in which the gas station was located. As we rounded the corner, we spotted Tony’s brother, who was hanging out with a bunch of bikes. Also known as working (for him). We had nothing on our calendar, so we decided to sit and visit with him.
This is actually Tony in the picture, but trust me when I tell you, all those bikes are NOT Tony’s…
Who should stroll by, but Captain Jack Sparrow! And the balloon guy had a gig down at the end, so we went to get the nephews some balloon swords and surreptitiously watched Sparrow pose with random kids. It was weird; we felt like it was just a continuation of Mia’s birthday party, except Mia wasn’t there and our nephews were. Weird.
This weekend, we get a holiday from birthday parties (don’t worry, we have two next weekend to make up for the time off). To kick the weekend off, we went yesterday and saw Eclipse. Something always goes wonky when we go to movie premieres and yesterday was no exception. The movie started, but the sound died and switched to playing the radio, and the curtains in front of the screen didn’t open all the way. They couldn’t fix it, so they upgraded us all into the IMAX theater. Oh my, IMAX. Can you say LARGE SCREEN with dizzying proportions? I can now say with certainty that even vampires have pores and nose hairs… and Taylor Lautner has very nice abs.
How big does a screen need to be anyway? See that guy way down there? That’s actually a concession stand.
Today was a relaxing, but busy day. We were on the go from the moment we got up. But it was relaxing because it was stuff we wanted to do… you know, like swimming (for me), basketball (for him). A deep tissue massage (for me), and another movie (for him). A drive in my convertible and working on a garden (both of us). Gaming (for him) and blogging (for me).
Just a nice day of freedom. Happy 4th of July.
Jammie J's Quest 