a birthday party weekend

dear sweet byron turned 4 today! 4 is such an awesome age, and he is such a great kid. we were so lucky to be with him this weekend at my parents' house for a big fun birthday party for ramona and byron (and uncle dana, and anna! holy january birthdays, batman.) our standing tradition has been to take all the kids to the water park at blue harbor resort in sheboygan, and we did it again this year. a few small kid items have been removed to make room for a wake board zone (side note: david OWNED that thing, successfully knee boarding and body surfing to the applause of impressed onlookers. dana, too, had some serious surfing chops. i also hear my dad had a turn on the wake board wave machine, and i'm sure he had an impressive performance, too.) but, despite the loss of the small kid slide zone, we still managed to have a lot of fun. i also managed to take almost no pictures, but that kind of makes sense, since i didn't really want to carry an expensive electronic device around the waterpark at the risk of damaging it, and my hands were kinda busy preventing death by drowning and head injury.

i did get this picture of ramona eating a snack at the water park, alongside the lazy river shoreline. she is under a towel, because we brought an illegal snack in and i was worried we'd be spotted eating our food from home. my kids are good sports, i am probably insane, and everyone is no doubt headed for a psychotherapist's sofa in the future.

after a warm locker room shower, we played a little skiball,

and then headed home for some birthday party silliness with cousins, music, hats, balloons, gifts, and a bunch of CRAZY.

look at these two birthday cuties. also, that cake was out of this world. thanks, mom. 

wild little boy intensity. always. 

after the kids went to bed, the table tennis got pretty serious with all adults. 

the birthday kids filled their new piggy banks with mormor and morfar during a little counting exercise after church.

after the party was over and we said our goodbyes to the becker family, james found a way to cheer us all up during the wretched end of that packers game by getting himself all wrapped up in balloons and bouncing gleefully all around. look at that smile. it is infectious. you can't stay mad at the packers with this little guy in the house.

and the kids invented pink-pong with my parents, using a pink balloon instead of a ping pong ball. they are both kid of amazingly good at pink pong. it was hilarious.