Birthday Weekend Recap

Originally, Derek and I were just going to take Drew to do a few fun things around town and open gifts on skype with everyone in Kansas. And then I thought it would be fun to go to Chuck. E. Cheese with him for the first time and invite his BFF from school and their parents who we've become friends with. Ultimately we ended up inviting three other families and their kiddos for a total group of 16 people! We didn't reserve a room, I didn't even send out official invites, we just casually told our friends to come and have some fun and eat pizza with us on Drew's birthday!

I hadn't been to a Chuck E. Cheese since I was young but all I had remembered were that they were dark, there was a ball pit, skee ball machines and then had a big automated band that played music on a stage. As it turns out, only one of those remain true in 2013 (skee ball), as the facility was nicely lit and filled with tons of fun activities for the kiddos at only one token per pop. The mouse really didn't stop for pictures and the band wasn't around these days, but the security system for entering and leaving with a child was a nice touch with decent pizza for the win.

Based on his nap, Drew had an awesome time and we were fortunate that some of our friends came out to help him celebrate. Below are some of the pictures from the day including our friends, some of the games, the cake, us helping Drew blow out his cake and him going to town eating it. For my sanity, the external flash and extra lenses weren't packed and the camera was turned on auto. Sorry for the quality, but the morning was meant to be focused on Drew and not the manual settings on my DSLR! 

Can you tell who our photographer friend is in the group above? Hint: cute chevron shirt and 3 perfectly smiling children! 

Cheers to being 2! 

(...and for us surviving our first Chuck E. Cheese escapade!)