what a weekend!

So last Saturday we had a pretty sweet Batman/Star Wars party for Lil' B who turned 10, and G who turned 8. I got this company - fenixgames.com - to come who sets up 6 LCD screens and 6 Xbox 360's and links them all together forming...Megatron! No. But, seriously everyone is able to play everyone else, on their own TV, so for us...no yelling "it's my turn!"

Um, wait, well that did happen once with E while I was dominating the crowd in Halo and there were no seats available, but then he soon played Sonic the Hedgehog with all the colors and flashy-ness and all was forgotten.

The turnout was good. My mom and brother, A's grandparents...and the 9 of us. We had invited some other friends and their kids, but sickness is as sickness does and they were unable to come due to mucus on the field.

And I did feel bad that Lil' B kept asking "is this all that's coming?" I mean, we do live far from their core group of friends - which we will try to rectify as soon as we can! - so getting parents to drive their kids to us may be more of a challenge than if we lived in, say, Plano. Soooo...

It was just us. Which, when you have 7 kiddos running around, it never seems to me like "is this all that's coming?"

In the end though, the boys said that they had the best b-day and smiles were in abundant supply. As were gifts. They got a ton of stuff. Here and...

At their grandparents - A's mom and dad - on Sunday as well. They gave Lil' B and G each a supercool GI Joe dude that was like a foot tall and talked and shot rockets and...I think he could walk on his own. I never had anything like that as a kid. I even remarked to A's mom that:

          "When I played GI Joe, the only talking they did was when I talked for them."

It's amazing how toys can pretty much play with or without the kids now. Flip on a switch, grab some snack cakes and a Juicy Juice and watch the live-action cartoon.

And at her parents, the kiddos helped decorate the Christmas tree, and built on their treehouse outside, and...

                 J-Girl and M climbed to the top of every tree...
          
   ...and J-Boy played Legos...

            ...and G played me in chess after Lil' B played his grandma in chess...

                                          ...and A and her dad talked books...

      ...and Lil' A was playing Bob-ette the Builder on her very own tree hideout...

...while E pushed a dump truck around, adding pieces of bark to the treehouse ladder asking me:

                     "Is this cool?"
                         
                                   "It's supercool."

The whole weekend was pretty much supercool.