This past weekend Ciárán turned 5. You would think I would have a lot to say about this, considering it was an action packed weekend. I think I may just be too exhausted to reach through my memory and extract all that I need to in order to make a proper blog post. Sadly, I’m not necessarily exhausted from the weekend, but simply just the day to day activities of the household!
Here goes.
Saturday, his actual birthday, we started out by heading down to Safeco Field for an exclusive Kids Club autograph session. Pitcher Charlie Furbush signed autographs for the kids and the Mariners Moose was there as well. Interestingly, Ciárán got freaked out by the mascot. It was the first time this happened, where previously he had no qualms about mascots.
We headed home afterwards, on the way picking up his cake for the party the next day. He opened his presents and then we went back down to the stadium for the baseball game.
Despite remembering to bring the camera, I only took one picture the whole time. It was an exciting game with Felix Hernandez pitching a shutout going for all 9 innings against the Texas Rangers. The kids had a great time, spending about an hour before the game in the playground. I actually thought Ciárán would wear himself out and fall asleep by the 3rd inning. Turns out he just started complaining a bit in the 5th inning about it being past his bed time.
On the way home we went over the Aurora Bridge and I took the scariest picture of my life the sun was setting in the Olympic mountains to the west, and while the picture doesn’t quite do it justice, it was a beautiful scene.
The next day was Ciárán’s birthday party. At Chuck E. Cheese. If you’ve not been to Chuck E. Cheese, or better yet attended a birthday party there, I have no words to describe the experience. It isn’t the first time we’ve had a kid hold their birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, but it was the first one where either of us went alone. Laura stayed home. Thankfully she also had the youngest child with her, as well as August, so I just had Ciárán and Déla.
What follows is a series of pictures from the party. A few things to note. The party started at 1:30. At 1:45, nobody else had shown up. When families did start showing up, it was a lot less than expected and invited. Over half of the crowd is siblings of those invited. And Ciárán got freaked out when going into the Ticket Blaster (if you don’t know, don’t ask) so he had Déla go in for him. She looked and looked for the magic ticket worth 1000 tickets – easy enough to spot, but turns out she was standing on it the whole time. They had fun, which is pretty much all that counts.
Instead of gifts we asked people to bring food to donate to Northwest Harvest. That worked out rather well, but it would have been nicer had more of the guests shown up, not just for Ciárán but so we could have gathered a bit more food to donate.
