It’s official, everyone: Vivian and I are now the parents of a two-year old. Friday was Hannah’s birthday, so we celebrated with a bunch of her little friends at the Sarpy YMCA by turning them all loose in an inflatable bounce-house in the workout room. They got to have free reign for nearly an hour after kicking off their shoes to bounce, climb, and slide all over the place. A few of the kids also discovered the giant yoga balls, which seemed like the perfect toy to roll around (at least until the Y staff told us to stop).
After the kids had been sufficiently bounced, we rounded them all back into the party room for some pizza and cake (always best to have the bouncing before dinnertime). Donna brought a lovely monkey birthday cake, and then she got to open a bunch of presents from her little friends. I think Hannah’s almost got the hang of opening presents, though she tends to become so fascinated with the first one or two she opens (such as a pair of pretend sippy cups) that she completely forgets that she has several others waiting to be opened. More practice for next year.
The rest of the family is still hanging out with us for the week leading up to Thanksgiving, of course. Most of our hanging-out tends to revolve around eating out, of course. On Saturday, we headed down to the Haymarket in Lincoln to have lunch with Dwayne Ball and my brother Nathan at Lazlo’s (which used to be called Fireworks and caused no end of confusion for us). Dad was absolutely fascinated with the parking meters out front for some reason and had to take a picture (and of course, I had to take a picture of him taking a picture).
Jonathan came down for a few days of watching Das Boot and playing some Apples to Apples with us, and then Nathan came up to Omaha on Sunday with Fat Pat’s pizza in tow, which was delicious as always. We got to introduce him to the IT Crowd before saying goodnight.
In other news, our friend Phil had a birthday that involved spicy Asian fondue, lots of random friends, and bean sprouts.
