Birthdays Galore

Following on the heels of Thanksgiving every year are Will and Addy's birthdays. This year, they had it at a park inside the loop. 

Our kids were the oldest ones there, but they still enjoyed checking out the park, which had a tunnel, slides, and an elevated walkway.

 

They helped out as child monitors and also found some use at powering the merry-go-round for the little ones.

After cake and breakfast burritos, we decided to make a day of it and headed to the Museum of Natural Science where we saw some familiar exhibits, as well as a few new things. Dad made the dinosaur exhibit more interesting by having the kids teach him something they learned from the signs in every "room."

One of the new things was an exhibit on jade and gold. This is very intricate gold sculpting; the skull made it one of the kids' faves.

Before we headed back to the car, we strolled around Hermann Park a little bit and enjoyed the cooler temps. Hadley felt that these columns were model-worthy, and they had so much fun rolling down Miller Hill again and again. We had flashbacks to our scavenger hunt from last year at the same time.

Unlike 2020, we felt okay with having an indoor birthday party for Owen this year. We had it early in the month to avoid holiday/activity conflicts, which worked out well. He chose an indoor trampoline park and a select group of friends (Matthew, Cole, Joseph, Jonathan, Brian, Jayden, and Timothy). The 11- and 12-year-olds had a blast playing dodgeball and hide-and-seek throughout the facility for two hours.

We went with two kinds of pizza and two kinds of cake, and strangely enough, we had a lot of leftover food! I think they were having too much fun (and getting too sweaty) to stuff themselves. Water was very popular though!

The party package is for a set minimum number of kids, and we had a couple of spots left, so Hadley was able to bring a friend of her own, Haley. They did their own thing and kept out of the boys' hair, for the most part.

Since the party was a couple of weeks early, we celebrated Owen a few times. He really wanted a cookie cake (that was explicitly forbidden by the trampoline park, for some reason!), so he got one of those on his actual birthday.

Hadley attended another birthday party for a friend, Olivia, where she got to go indoor sky diving! Right up our little daredevil's alley! The instructor said she was a natural and that she could come back in 11 years for a job.

Lastly, we took the kids to see Potted Potter, which is a 2-man live show that recaps the 7 books in the series in 70 minutes. The kids thought it was pretty funny! Yay for the return of live theater!

We made a day of this also, since it was in a different part of downtown. Our first stop was St. Arnold's, so I could get my free pint for donating blood! It was a gorgeous day!

Our second, and last, stop before the show was City Hall and the surrounding parks.