Summer 2014
When Jack turned 2, and even 3, I remember being sad when I would invite kids from Jack's class at daycare to his birthday parties and only a couple would show up. I also remember wondering why so few of the kids in his class seemed to be inviting classmates to their birthday parties. Silly, I know, but mommies worry about silly things.
Well, apparently all that starts to happen around the age of 4. Jack had been going to one or 2 parties a month throughout the school year, but apparently he has a lot of friends with summer birthdays. When we weren't travelling or playing soccer over the summer, it seems like we were at someone's birthday party. Jack loved it! Here's a quick look at some of the fun that was had...
Jack's friend Olivia from school turned 5 and had a super cool party at the Legoland Discovery Center in Grapevine. The party started in a party room where the kids ate pizza and each put together a Lego creation:
What did they make?
It was a spinning hamburger!!
After that, they let everyone loose to ride the rides and play. We rode Jack's favorite ride with the birthday girl, and then we had to run to birthday party #2 for the day - all the way back to Pump it Up in Frisco (where Jack had his 4th birthday party) to celebrate Tiger's 4th. They splurged and went for the black light package, which I'd never seen before.
I'm really wishing now that I would have take pictures of something/someone other than just Jack. Oh well!
Jack's school friend Harrison had his party at the Sci Tech Discovery Center here in Frisco. It is small as far as museums go, but its a really fun place for younger kids to spend a couple of hours. First, they all spent some time checking out the museum. Jack liked the magnets:
Here are Jack and his friend Jordan watching and listening as ping pong balls drop down over metal rods:
All of the boys particularly loved this centrifuge-like spinning ride!
After exploring the museum, we headed into the party room to make paper rockets and then shoot them. The highlight was heading outside to drop various substances in a bottle of coke and watch the reaction. Of course, Mentos made the biggest coke fountain! Jack was super-excited because he got to carry one of the Coke bottles outside.
Jack's soccer buddy Carver had a dinosaur-themed party at his house. The kids bounced on a bounce house, hunted for dinosaur eggs in the yard, grew their own dinosaurs in water and had flying dinosaur races in the street. They all (except Jack) wore their explorer hats - how cute is that?!
Even Livi got to come to this one!
Another soccer friend, Cole, had his party at Urban Air, a trampoline park. Jack was a little intimidated when the big kids were bouncing all around him, but loved it when he could find an area more to himself:
His favorite part was bouncing off of the trampoline into the foam pit. I think he could have done this all day!
He also had fun bouncing around with all of his soccer friends:
I didn't pull out my camera at every party - mostly the ones when I was chasing both Jack and Livi around at the same time. We had fun at a soccer party on the water slides at the Frisco Athletic Center for Jack's soccer friend Tristan's 5th birthday and on an inflatable slide at one of Jack's school friend's houses, and more that I'm sure I'm forgetting. I think a lot of parents find all of the kids birthday parties tiresome. Maybe its because I'm a working mom who doesn't often get to see her kids just playing with their friends, but I love to go, meet his friends and their parents and see him interacting with all of his buddies and having fun!
