Well, We Survived!

Friday night was Joey's slumber party. While I certainly felt better than I had earlier in the week, my throbbing throat and head had turned into the head cold that I knew was coming all along. I've felt like I've had my head underwater for days and by the end of the night, I was losing my voice. But this was probably one of the easiest birthday parties we've ever done.

Joey goes to a tiny private Catholic school. As such, it has made inviting kids for his birthday parties easy because their class is so small that they are all friends, and we don't have to pick and choose among 30 kids who we will invite. No hurt feelings. Joey has been fortunate enough to be going through school with an exceptional group of boys. They are all friends, they all get along very well, and they are all just genuinely good kids.

All five boys were able to attend. I had talked to my mom and my dad and was able to unload the other 3 kids for the night. My dad took Alec and my mom took Kyle and Lauren because she had also gotten them tickets to a Disney show at the arena near her house on Saturday. (Kyle was NOT happy about that because my mom didn't come to pick them up until after all of the boys had gotten here and he was hanging out with them downstairs.) So the boys spent most of the evening in the basement playing video games and having Nerf gun wars. Shaun even got in on the action later that night. They had a BLAST! There was no fighting, nothing got broken, there just really weren't any problems. This house is GREAT for having kids over. With all the wood floors I didn't have to fuss over them wearing their shoes and the basement is a great place to play while keeping the noise muffled from upstairs. We couldn't have done it in our old house. In fact, the one slumber party Joey did have while we were living there, we hosted out at my dad's! We made them all go to bed around 11:30 and I think Shaun only had to stick his head in once to quiet them down. I'd say they were pretty much all asleep by midnight.

Well, there was one little thing. I awoke to the boys talking and giggling that morning. I looked around, realizing it was STILL DARK. So I looked at the clock and it wasn't even 6:00 yet! Um, NO. So I sent Shaun to tell them to be quiet, there was NO way I was letting them get up before the roosters, and I was fairly certain they wouldn't listen to me. I don't know if any of them went back to sleep, but they were quiet, so it was okay, and we were able to go back to sleep. It was around 8:00 when we heard them plotting to come in and attack us with their Nerf guns. Shaun got up and foiled their plot. No, that would not have been a good thing to do!

It was a good party. And it was good for me to be reminded of why we send our kids to that school, why we made the move to be closer even though Shaun would be so much farther from work, why I am so thankful for my mom who helps us do it by contributing to tuition. I couldn't say a bad thing about any of those boys and we look forward to having them back....one at a time ;) These days, it is so very important for our children to have friends that help them be good people, and so very hard to do. Here is a picture of Joe with his posse. I had to get one of all of them together because it looks like two of them will be leaving us in the next few months :(

Left to right: Anthony, Nick, Kienan, Joey, Alex, and Atanasio