Birthday boy festivities

After school on Friday, we all went to Chuck E Cheese to begin Jackson's birthday celebrations.  It was so nice since we got there before the masses.  We stayed for a few hours and the kids had a blast.

They hopped in the monster truck right away.  Lila liked it until it started moving up and down. 
She made a very quick exit after that happened!

It was the same way with horseback riding.  "Get me off, now!!"

The stationary bike was much more suitable for little Miss Priss.

Meanwhile, big brother was off playing football...

while Maddie was showing Lila that the toddler slide was really fun.  She still wanted no part of it though.  Go figure.

We finally convinced her to sit on the Barney Train, but she hopped off before he had a chance to start talking to her.

After toddler area play-fail, we went to look for Memaw and Jackson. 
They were rocking out to Guitar Hero.  Just look at Memaw's concentration!

After pretending that we were real firefighters, we set off to try our hand at racecar driving.  Let's just say that neither of us will probably ever be recruited for Nascar racing.

After a few more games, we finally found something that all of us could do.  Skeeball!!  This was my fave back when I was little and it was really fun getting to play with all three kids.  Lila was throwing two balls at once, Maddie's ball would often times end up in my lane and Jackson had a few wild pitches himself, but we got a ton of tickets and I saw many smiles.

Two hours later we were on our way out of Chuck E Cheese.  Jackson's Gigi bought him a birthday crown to wear and he loved it. 

Tokens: $20
Time spent playing: 2 hours
No one fighting or crying!!: Priceless

That evening we went to Napoli's for Jackson's family birthday dinner.  Afterwards, we came home and let him open his presents.  He got so many cool toys--like this transformer and his hot wheels track.

He was having so much fun opening all of his gifts that he was actually the last one to eat cake and ice cream.  When he was finally done, he told me that it was really good.  I think I'd call that a great first day of being 5.  Stay tuned for party pics.