Luke's party

There is good and bad that goes with Luke having a birthday at the beginning of the year. The good is that it is close enough to Christmas that I usually shop for his birthday presents at the same time I am doing Christmas shopping. Then by the time his birthday comes around I have very little if any shopping to do for it. The bad is that it usually falls at the same time that I am hurriedly trying to get together the family calendar for my family so I don't have much time or energy to devote to any kind of party for him.

This year was Luke's year to have a friend party and we talked him in to waiting a couple of weeks after his birthday. Partly because I was a little burned out energy wise and partly because my parents were going to be out of town and we needed them to come over and help watch the younger kids for us during the party time. My parents got back in town last Tuesday (Feb 15th) and we had originally planned on having the party that following Saturday (Feb 19th). I told my parents when I picked them up at the airport that we might be putting the party off another week again because we hadn't even gotten invitations out yet. When I mentioned this to Luke he started to get upset because he had already been talking to his friends at school about the party and had cleared the date with a couple of them already - and a couple of them wouldn't be available the following Saturday. So I talked it over with DH and we decided to keep the party for the 19th and made up invitations that night for Luke to give out to his friends.

Luke really wanted to go to a place this year called NickelMania. It is a place where they have all different kinds of video and arcade games and you pay for them with nickels - anywhere from 1-4 nickels per game. Luke invited 6 kids and amazingly they were able to come. We had them meet at our house for cupcakes and presents first. My parents came over to watch the 4 youngest kids and then DH took half the kids in one car and I took the other half with M&M in our van.

They had a wide range of games there - from the old classics like Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Q-bert and BurgerTime to Air Hockey, basketball shooting and ball-toss games to some of the more current video games. On some of the games you could win tickets and then you could use those tickets to buy some small toys and candy. I think that everyone had a good time and I know that Luke had a blast. Luke was very good about spending time with each of his friends while at NickelMania and spent time playing games with each of them. I think it might be a fun location to take some of the older kids for some fun family time. Unfortunately I took my camera with me and didn't take a single picture while we were there!! So here are some shots while the kids were at our house for the cupcakes and presents:Fortunately for me (and my parents) I was able to get MJ down for a nap before the party started and she only woke up about 45 minutes before we got back home! And it's nice to have that party under our belt!! Luke is definitely one of our more friendly kids and so he makes friends easily and has a lot of them at school. Because of that his friend parties tend to be a little more involved than some of the other kids and he has a hard time some years limiting the number of kids he invites!