Birthday Shenanigans

Steve was making fun of me because I woke up early, hit the ground running, and kept on going like the Energizer Bunny. (Er, I'm not usually an active morning person.) But what happened was that I woke up at 6 something a.m. with the timeline of the day running through my mind, I knew I had a lot to do and a limited amount of time to do it, so I just gave up, got up, and hit it.

I ended up running to a celebration place to pick up some balloons and matching plates, dropped off and picked up some mail at the post office, went and got Kaylee's birthday cake (and had to pick up a giant handmade turtle while I was there, which was, let's face it, killer good), dropped everything back off at home and grabbed the kid, took her to Wal-Mart to pick out the two Barbies I'd promised her, got home in time to wrap up a present, print out the Texas Roadhouse menu to determine what we should do with everyone there, get the kid ready, and head out to the movie theater. I pre-bought the tickets for everyone, then as they came in Kaylee would give them their ticket, and the kids hung out in the play area. I gave everyone some tokens so they could play air hockey and dance revolution and driving games and stuff until the movie was close to starting, bought drinks and snacks for everyone, and off we went to see the "Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader". The girls all sat in the back row, and myself and another mom who wanted to see the movie sat a bit away from them. The movie didn't get great reviews, but I thought it was good. If you know anything about the Narnia books and understand the Christian correlation behind them, you can talk to you kids about that so they get the bigger picture, which was what I did with Kaylee. I was a little worried about the violent nature of one of the scenes (it was a sea monster attacking the boat, though nobody was hurt, it was just loud, big, dark and scary), but the girls are 10 now and I think they blew that off pretty well, especially having Group Courage. You know how that goes, don't you? ;)

When the movie ended I packed them all up in the Suburban and went over to Texas Roadhouse. You know why Kaylee picked Texas Roadhouse? Because they'd bring a saddle over to your table, yell a lot, loudly, and do a giant happy birthday thing, and she wanted it all. Craziness. But the biggest craziness was that while we got there right on time, that place was Booked Up! Who eats at 3:45 p.m.?? Apparently the city of Kokomo, that's who! It was almost 4:30 before we even got our food, and that's when I'd told people to come get their kids. So almost all the kids had cellphones with them, and they all shot off messages to their moms telling them to give 'em another 30 minutes. Funny, technology today! The girls all got steaks, and afterward I broke out the guitar cake, which Kaylee thought was "awesome", she got her birthday salute from the restaurant, we opened gifts, and the parents came. The last dad came at almost 6 p.m., and finally we were on our way home, with an overnight guest, who is currently in the other room playing Barbies contentedly.

I've got some pictures to put up, but I have to wait until my new laptop is done with working FrontPage on it. I could put them here, but this is a public page even if nobody (almost) knows about it, so with five other girls involved I'd rather put the pics on Kaylee's password protected site...

She had a wonderful time, a great birthday, all the kids were wound up and had a lot of fun. And now that early morning has caught up to me, and the busy day, and the bit of tension hoping everything goes off smoothly, and I'm about ready for that nap. Oh wait, I have a guest. I can sleep tomorrow, right? ;)