I'm not sure today could have been any busier if we had tried. My work throws a holiday party for kids and today was the day of the party. So we headed out to the hotel where the party was being hosted. There were less games this year than last year (which had less than the year before). The kids still seemed to have a good time, and it was an opportunity to sit on Santa's lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas.
I had to go back later and ask Santa what Quinn had asked for after he refused to tell us. It was a race car, but that's all I know and I suspect Quinn asked for a specific type of race car, but Santa didn't give me any more details than that. Santa is supposedly hundreds of years old, so maybe his memory is going (which would explain why he still brings me presents since it's obviously not because I've been good).
Speaking of Santa, we're looking for input on when does one break the truth about that particular idea to youngsters. I remember several years ago answering a question from Quinn about Santa being real with a "If you believe he's real, then who's to say he isn't?" The reality question hasn't come up again since then. And Quinn has since indoctrinated Catherine with the lore. So the question then becomes how long do you let this go on? Should I have just come clean several years ago? Or do we continue letting them believe the fiction?
Back to the kid's party. One of the attractions they had this year was a juggler. Who was "giving lessons" to the kids. Which for the most part meant he had a lot of extra balls the kids could play with (which sounds really bad out of context). Quinn gave it a shot with somewhat predictable results.
There was also a room with a giant inflatable twister moon bounce. The problem here was after Quinn exerted himself on the moon bounce his cough went nuts until he had rested for a while.
There was also a guy making elaborate balloon creations. This was one of the more popular activities. The bad news here was the creations were so elaborate it was taking forever just to do one item, so the line for this guy was about half an hour or more. Catherine ended up standing in line and getting an angel wing / halo (which Quinn tried on briefly when Catherine was getting her face painted). The balloon angel wings lasted all of about 20 minutes, then as we were leaving Catherine set it on the ground and it got stepped on and popped. Which is the really bad thing about these elaborate balloon things, the kids get so attached to them and they're incredibly delicate and when they do pop that's the end of it. Add to this both kids are somewhat on edge since they've gotten less sleep over the past couple of days than they normally do and the balloon popping resulted in a mini meltdown (which stopped almost as suddenly as it started thankfully, which was odd but I wasn't about to question why it stopped).
And I couldn't leave without getting some face time in with the big jolly guy myself. I mean I need to do something to offset that whole being good thing.
After the party we came home and Barry and his kids came over for a playdate. This eventually resulted in everyone playing the Wii. Barry tried out the Wii Sports fitness test and his Wii age was 69 (which might be about the highest score I've ever seen, I think my Mom even managed 59 her first time trying it). We eventually started playing the Mario / Sonic Olympic game since four people can play that one and some of the games are fairly simplistic. Predictably this usually resulted in Quinn or Catherine beating everyone.
And then after dinner and after Barry and everyone left we had to take Quinn to church for the second night of the choir program. And the girl with the bow from last night was in a different position, so I had a much better view of Quinn. And the woman in front of me with Marge Simpson hair wasn't moving, so I could go around her without having her move in front of my shot. All of which meant I would have gotten some great shots had I actually remembered to put the memory card back into the camera before we left (I had pulled pictures off earlier and evidently forgot to put the card back in the camera). Tonight there were more people than last night. So of course Quinn picked to tonight to go to the nose. Although it's possible he was just scratching it really hard. And even though Ginger got him a different pair of pants for tonight he was still scratching his legs at various times during the program for some reason. So once again Quinn is getting to bed really late as is Catherine (she decided to go to tonight's performance also). We may need to force the kids to take naps tomorrow to try and reclaim some of this lost sleep.
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