Noah's Birthday - Celebration #1

In our family, we have this tendency to make birthdays last as long as possible.

It's not really intentional. We just have so much family. Everyone wants a chance to celebrate, and in order to fit them all in, we have to celebrate in doses.

Noah's actual birthday (obviously) was Saturday. His little friend Alice happened to be having her birthday party on that day. We didn't have any major plans, and we wanted to make Alice happy by making sure Noah was there. But we still wanted to have our own little celebration.

So Friday afternoon...

We were experiencing a torrential downpour.

I mean, we're talking buckets and buckets of water falling from the sky.

I'm not gonna complain. It was great, especially because the overall temp that day was 75. 

Anyway, I decided we should try out Monkey Joe's. If you're not familiar with Monkey Joe's, it's basically a big room full of bouncy stuff... slides, bouncy houses, etc. I'd looked it up before going and saw they had a separate area for toddlers (which was great, considering how insanely wild kids can get at those places).

The best part?

It only cost us FIVE dollars.

Adults are free, and Noah was only $5. I think that was Brad's favorite part.

My favorite part? It wasn't ridiculously crowded.

Noah actually had full reign of the toddler area... except for the occasional 8 year olds that obviously didn't know how to read, didn't care that the workers told them to get out of the area, and had parents who used the MJ employees as babysitters. Ahem. Sorry.

Anyways...

It was a huge hit for Noah.

He loves bouncing in general (on our bed, his bed, the trampoline, the couch...), so I figured he'd like it.

So yeah, he loved Monkey Joe's.

However, he did not like the actual blowup figure of Monkey Joe himself.

In fact, it scared the livin' daylights out of him.

We'd be bouncing along, having a good time...

...then suddenly?

He'd catch his eye on Monkey Joe.

The problem is that it was attached to a slide. So every time some kid would climb around on the slide, it would make the Monkey Joe move, as if it was real.

Poor Noah.

But overall, he had a blast.

Pretty sure we'll be going back more often, especially after school starts back.

***

Also need to throw in a quick Happy Birthday! to my baby brother, Harrison.
He turns 21 today! Crazy, crazy!
Seems like just yesterday he looked like this:

Happy Birthday, Bud!

Posting may be sporadic this week.
Noah is officially getting his 2nd set of molars in, which is making for a lot of random whining, a runny nose, and extra neediness. The positive: we went to Ikea today. I could really make us go broke in that store...

Hope everyone's having a great week!