Monday, January 16, 2017

January 16 – “Happy Bat-Birthday”

Yesterday was Cailyn’s 8th birthday.  Time flew a little more quickly than I expected there.  She had a birthday party yesterday afternoon.  Super hero themed.  Girl superhero, of course.  Cailyn wore her new Batgirl cape that April made under the tutelage of Chris the other day.  She had an entire costume to go along with it.  Long Bat-socks.  A Bat-mask just like the one Batgirl on TV wears that in no way impedes her vision or adequately hides her secret identity from anyone except the folks in TV land.  She wore a shirt emblazoned with the number 8, and even had yellow utility arm bands.  Frighteningly beautiful. 

The party was at a place called Jumping World.  Interesting outfit.  I had actually heard of it before.  I saw an episode of Undercover Boss a while back where the head honcho revealed what it was like to work there.  The entire center of the place is a mass of trampolines shaped like fifty-yard dash straightaways with a trampoline cushion at each end that rises up a good eight or ten feet.  Kids were constantly running back and forth, flipping and twisting and sprinting, trying to reach the top of the end cushions.  Another section was set up with basketball goals and trampolines.  Another, Jachin and Micah and Josiah’s favorite, was a massive game of dodge ball on trampolines.  They also had simpler areas for the little bitty guys, like a ball pit and a bounce house.  Perhaps the oddest area, though was a huge plastic cylinder floating on some water.  A kid could crawl inside and run around like a hamster, trying to get the cylinder to move around.  There were random, you pay extra games all around the edges of the room.  You know, like those games with the claw where you try to pick up a stuffed animal.  And they also had a snack bar.  Oh, and for the adults … there were two separate areas, one with overstuffed chairs, arranged around a television set.  And from what I could tell, both of those areas stayed quite full the entire time.  Not because parents were neglecting their kids, mind you.  It was just that there was a football game on.  The Dallas Cowboys football game.  So sad.  But enough said here.  I’m sure there will be plenty more comments on FaceBook throughout the day today if you want to wallow in the sadness further.

The party part of the festivities was held in a roped off area set aside for just such occasions.  Extra-long picnic-table with a hostess provided by the place.  They apparently have a connection with a pizza place, because part of every party going on was the pizza serving (and there were a lot of parties going on).  After the pizza April and Nathan pulled out birthday cupcakes for everyone, and a special round cake for Cailyn.  It was allegedly so she could have a large enough place to put her number 8 candle and the Batgirl decoration.  And after the rousing song (which I couldn’t sing rousingly myself because I was holding young Ezra at the time.  Three week olds don’t take kindly to loud, off-key bellering by old DadDad’s), Cailyn dug in to her special cake.  No, literally dug in.  Face first.  With only a little help from her Daddy.  She enjoyed her face plant immensely, though, and wore it for a few extra minutes as a badge of honor.  Plenty of time for pictures.  Nana and Aunt Christina came to the rescue with baby wipes to clean it up. 

Cailyn was blessed with a lot of presents from her friends from school and the softball team.  Several of the girls were even coming over for a girls’ night slumber party.  Enjoy that, Nathan.  I heard they were going to paint fingernails and toenails.  He’s a pro at that one.  In the words of the immortal Robin … Happy Bat-Birthday, Cailyn.

Philippians 4:9 says, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me — put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”


Father, thank you for the eight special years we have had with Cailyn.  Draw her close to you as she grows.  Amen.

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