Party At Gymini

Today was Catherine's big birthday party with all of her friends. It was at Gymini and it certainly looked like all the kids had a lot of fun. Catherine enjoyed it because she was allowed to be first at everything. Plus she got to hang out with her favorite teacher "Mr Eric". Sadly even though I had powered up all the cameras, made room on all the memory cards, I forgot to change the batteries in the flash unit, so that wasn't working as well as I would have liked (it was taking way too long to recharge and sometimes simply wouldn't fire). Looks like I need to think about getting a lens for low light situations. I took lots of pictures, but not many turned out. I picked some of the better ones below, but even then the pickings were slim.


Parachute games are always a hit with the kids.




There was a huge trampoline area with ropes the kids could climb.






There was also a huge spongy pit area the kids could jump in and swing on a rope out over.




An obstacle course that included some time on the uneven bars and mini rope swing.


Then some the celebration with the cake.


And a rousing game of Duck Duck Goose to end the festivities. After that we went out to dinner with Barry and his clan at Pomodoro (we had tried Red Robin initially but the wait for a table for a group that big was simply too long to even consider with it already being a bit late). Once we got home Catherine managed to convince us that she should be allowed to open up all her loot from the party, but we told her she wouldn't be able to play with any of it until tomorrow. She got lots of books, Barbies and other girly things so she'll have some fun tomorrow playing with that since it's a holiday and the kids aren't in school.

So as has been mentioned in previous posts, Quinn's been in Richmond for the past couple of days. Because of that I had to go pick up him up for the party since, so I met Ginger's parents at about the halfway point and we went straight to the party that had already started (I think we may have been about 20 minutes late or so getting there). I know Quinn likes spending time with his grandparents, because he almost started crying when he had to say goodbye. Of course, that doesn't do much for my self esteem since it can be interpreted that he's crying because he has to go with me. But, even though he was sad and started to tear up he didn't actually cry, and later he told me that he almost did, but that he didn't because "Big boys don't cry in front of other people." I was wondering where he had picked up that line and Ginger explained that it might have been from the "Farmer Boy" book the kids are listening to on CD. That's a book in the Little House series and focuses on a boy named Almanzo. And in the book it states stuff like "He did not cry. He would have cried if he had not been almost ten years old." So I'm guessing that's where that came from.