luke's birthday

all three kids were invited to chuck e. cheese to celebrate our neighbor luke's fourth birthday.  madelyn had practically been counting down the days because loves a "party" and was pretty excited about chuck e. cheese too.  its funny that she was so excited about the location since she had only been there once before and it was two years ago!  apparently, it had made quite an impression.

the party was right after school to try and avoid the crowds at c.e.c. so i had all three kiddos on my own.  it actually wasn't so bad since madelyn hung out with the birthday boy (with her in the first picture) and i just had to keep the boys together.

maddux had to climb into every seat and  didn't know which direction to head in first.

mason giving me a big high-five after a game of air hockey.

there were shark cupcakes after our pizza lunch (we ate lunch before games and took a break for the cupcakes).

luke's mom had made a less icing intensive cupcake for maddux that had a 'life preserver'  donuts on top (the stripes were fruit roll-up slices)

mason and madelyn had carefully selected luke's present and mason couldn't wait for him to open it.  mason didn't  try to help open it, he just kept giving it to him.  they had selected a dinosaur playmat/toybox, dinosaur book and some cars mini color sheets with markers.

and i got the 'mom of the year' award while trying to show the kids how to play skee ball.  the game kept timing out before they could roll all of the balls up the ramp so i was trying to roll between each of their tries while pulling maddux off the ramp that he kept trying to climb.  he choose to jump up for a return attempt just as i released a ball.  it hit him in the face.  i didn't realize how hard it hit him until i noticed a bruise just a few minutes later.  but that was the end of his climbing...

it was fun celebrating with luke and we feel lucky to have his family as neighbors.  love.