Star Wars Birthday Success!

J turns 6 tomorrow (hard to believe) and we had his birthday party on Sunday. It was a weird Austin-in-winter day where it looked like rain but only sprinkled a few times, while being over 70 degrees so we had to have the AC on in the house...

We got a moonwalk with a slide in it as the main form of entertainment. Happily the house has a great side yard that accomodated the giant blow up structure nicely. Only one piece of drama: the installer came right as we were finishing cleaning up the yard and set it up. It had two blowers so we ran one extention cord into the living room (front of the house) and the second to the back porch. Ryan was out watching J and P jump before everyone arrived. We had agreed to have some "quiet time" before everyone got there, so they were coming in. Ryan comes into the house and I see the house deflating...

"Oh, you unplugged it until everyone gets here?"

"What do you mean?"

Yells from the back yard "Mom, Dad, Help!"

We had blown the circuit breaker with the kids in it!
They were rescued, we moved one extention cord and we were fine for the rest of the day.

One nice moment in the whole party prep process... J actually pitched in. He began the process with a very self-involved attitude about how he didn't have to help, but we had a chat about how it's a lot of work to get ready to have a great time, and then he was on board. He gathered all the laundry baskets and helped sweep the floors, all without a word of complaint (miracle!).

The other big hit was the cake. It was a bit of effort on my part, but it was all worth it when J walked around the whole party telling everyone what a wonderful job I had done and how he thought it was "the best cake Mom has ever made". It's nice to see him grow into more adult emotions.

As we like to say "May the Fork be with you... use the Fork!"