This baby boy turned 6 years old in December. Can you believe that?! Let me just say that those sweet blue eyes and pretty eyelashes light up even the hardest of days for me. Trey truly is my joy. I tell him that often, and he crashes into me with the biggest hug every time. Trey came just 16 months after Jack, and his babyhood was sort of a blur to me. But what I do remember is that out of all of my babies, he was the least needy. And he still has the ability to do his own thing in a happy sort of way... well, most of the time! He bounces around and has a hard time being quiet, mostly because he is just excited about life. He is creative and artistic, and I said out loud the other day that "I wish I could dance like Trey". The boy has some moves, and a gift for music that I can't wait to see blossom one day. Trey cares about people, and cried the other night when I told him to be firm with a girl at school who has been picking on him (don't worry, she's only secretly in love with him!). He's the first to share or give up a turn for someone else. He makes a new friend at the McDonald's Playplace exactly 30 seconds after we arrive. He begs to read the Bible every night. And he gets his baby sister to smile like no one else can. Now, we're still working on the whining and not interrupting others, but he's come a long way since he started Kindergarten, so there's hope!
He's been six for a month now, but I still wanted to share some pictures from his party since we took the big plunge. You guessed it. THE Chuck E. Cheese's plunge. Now if you're a close friend of mine, I know what you're thinking. That the day would never come. The truth is that I've never been a big fan of this place in the past. Too many kids acting like crazies, the noise volume, and the never-enough-tokens-to-satisfy-any-child dilemma. Oh, and then there's the whole ticket system. Which gets you nothing, except for maybe a microscopic plastic spider for something like 1000 tickets. Which makes your child want more tokens. Are you sensing the cycle (and the humor!) here? And all the while I'm trying to teach my kids to be frugal. But suddenly I'm a believer. And I'll tell you why...
First of all, look at this face. That is one happy boy. And sometimes it's OK that it's all about the experience, and nothing about what you take home with you,
except for a very happy kid.
Secondly, we scored big. I shouldn't let you in on my little secret, but we're all friends here and you deserve to know. If you book a party at 10am or earlier, the place is empty. Literally empty in our case until we showed up. Nice. We had our own space to be crazy (space which incidentally had doubled in size the day before, when they opened up the newly remodeled part for the first time ever. Twice the games, twice the fun! What timing - a total accident.). And, the best part.... any party before 10am on a Saturday gets you DOUBLE TOKENS! That's right. Instead of each child getting 20 tokens, they got 40! Definitely enough tokens to get that plastic spider if you play your cards - uh, I mean tokens - right.
I like this picture for two reasons: One, because Trey never put his tokens down when he was playing a game. Like someone (Chase) was going to steal them or something. And two, because the shot of Tyler in the background is totally hilarious. That's the Dad alright, feverishly feeding the ticket counting machine, after he had convinced all of the kids to pool their tickets together so they could get one big item to give to Trey for his birthday. Meanie.
The most entertaining part of the day might have been these two, who bought some tokens for themselves and then went back to buy some more. Not sure what Grandma Cain was saying here, but they were both a little competitive, to put it mildly. The party was over and we almost had to leave them there because we couldn't pull them away from the machines. And GrandDad. Oh yeah. He can dance with Chuck like nobody's business.
Now people, don't everyone show up at Chuck E. Cheese's before 10am on a Saturday morning. If you do, then I might be back at square one. :) Or, you might just get talked out of your hard-earned tickets. I wouldn't risk it if I were you.
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