Birthday Parties and Crab Leg Brawls

Yesterday was my Chris' birthday. It just so happens that it is also the birthday of C2 (Caitlyn), so on Saturday we drove down to St. Louis to be at her birthday party. The kids had a blast in this big jungle gym type contraption. I, on the other hand, was smitten. You see, Donna was babysitting for a friend. This baby... she's got to be one of the cutest babies in the whole wide world. I gave her sips of Mt. Dew and she became my best friend. We sat together in the baby ball pit and handed balls back and forth to each other. It's the little things like that that make life good.

Caitlyn was a doll, as usual. She's so quiet and reserved. I have pictures, folks.

There's the birthday girl!

Okay, here's the rundown in case you forgot. Starting from the left, that's K2 then C1, Josh, C2, B2 holding Nana (so cute!), then A2. K1 couldn't make it this time. But I don't want to leave her out, so I'll show you a picture that didn't develope right the last time we saw her:

This one didn't turn out right, but it's still one of my favorites, because those are some cool effects going on around her.

Anyway, we had loads of fun. Now given that St. Louis has a Red Lobster and Quincy doesn't, combined with the fact that it's Lobsterfest, we decided to go there for dinner. Kade didn't want to go, because we told him it was a seafood restaurant. The kid had a bad experience at a chinese restaurant once. He ate three platefuls of shrimp, made himself sick and now refuses to eat it. It was his own fault. I told him stop eating it. So Red Lobster wasn't the most ideal place for this kid.

Chris and I ordered him a salad and figured he'd be all right with that. And he was... that is, until he saw the half pound of king crab legs on my plate. Suddenly he reverted back to ... I don't even know. Let me put it this way, every few minutes, I had to throw a crab leg over lest he start a river with all his drooling. And the way he kept licking his lips every time I cracked one open? Well, I didn't even get to enjoy my food. I was afraid he'd take my arm off if I didn't snatch it back fast enough. So yeah, he ate all my crab legs. All of them. Half a pound. We're never taking him there again. That was embarrassing. And I didn't even get to suck the crab out of the shell all sexy like. What a killjoy.

To celebrate Chris' birthday, I decided he needed an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. So I called to him, "I'm going to the store to get some more Mt. Dew!"

"You're full of shit!" he called back.

Damn. Through the years, it's gotten harder and harder to think up excuses to go to the store on his birthday. He was on to us, this year. That's all right. The cake was still good.

So how was my weekend? Well, I sat in a ball pit with a baby who was seriously jonesing on my Mt. Dew, had to fight to get some crab legs -- I lost, couldn't surprise my husband and to top it off, I have to wash ALL the laundry in the house. ALL of it. Because we have to start packing for Disney World. I'd say it was a pretty good weekend.