Birthday Boy

Birthday Boy
Originally uploaded by stepheniew9

Finn turned three last Saturday and we celebrated with friends and family at JumpZone. An awesome pirate cake was involved... click the photo to go to our Flickr albums.


The day started out pretty good despite the cough both boys had developed. Caleb went to pick up the pirate cake we'd been talking up for a whole month and Finn was SO excited about it. He went to the Publix bakery around 10am, picked it up, and drove home without incident - or so we thought. The cake is really big with two levels for the pirate ship. When we opened the box to take a look, the weight of the top deck had pulled away from the rest of the cake, resulting in a split right down the middle. I was distraught, but called Publix to see what we could do. The nice lady in the bakery said she knew we could bring it back and they could fix it, but... wait a minute... let her manager talk to me. I spoke with the manager who insisted they make a whole new cake in 2 hours and DELIVER IT PERSONALLY to our party site. And that's what they did. I couldn't believe they would do that! I always loved to shop at Publix becasue of the little things: the pretty petit fors they did for Finn's Christening, the friendly people, the butcher who always grinds my chicken for me, how they give the boys cookies in the bakery, and the pep talk their regional manager gave the library one year at Staff Development Day. But now I will sing the Publix praises to anyone who will listen.

When we arrived at JumpZone there was a fire truck outside and the building had been evacuated. "Just a fire drill" the staff told us so we piled all our party stuff on the sidewalk and waited it out. The kids enjoyed the fire truck so it wasn't a big deal. A few minutes later we all went back in, dropped our stuff off to be set up in the party room, and proceeded to jump our ittle hearts out. Until five minutes later, when they had another fire drill. Again, with the evacuating and the waiting. The fire truck wasn't so great this time, and it wass hard to explain to Finn why we had to put our shoes back on a go outside for no apparent reason. By now we were 30 minutes into our party time and had only been able to play for 5 minutes. The whole party was 1 hour, 45 minutes including cake and gift time. I felt bad for the staff becaause there had to be at least 5 birthday parties going on that day and there were some mad parents, but it actually worked out for us since some of our guest couldn't come until later anyway. Sliding and jumping commenced, pirate cake & ice cream were eaten, and friends were played with.
JumpZone was a bit pricey, but in the end totally worth it to not have to clean my house and have the party there. Plus you got a "party coordinator" that set up everything for you in a private room, sliced cake, cleaned up, and managed the crowd so you could enjoy your kid's birthday and talk with everybody. There were no giant rats or tokens to contend with and all the kids got to really play hard, hopefully to crash hard later when they got home. Finn really enjoyed it, especially the pirate cake!

And my oldest boy is a little older...