Party All The Time

I couldn't be happier to be at the tail-end of party-palooza. We arrived at my parents house on Thursday and settled in and just hung out as a family. I of course ADORE this but the party was in the back of my mind and I knew I had to get organized. We always have a great turn out with my family. Because they are such good sports, we decided to encourage people to wear disguises to the birthday party.

The birthday party featured a picture of Michael wearing a mustache he got at a candy store. He is so unfazed by people staring at him when he wears it. Instead, Michael is able to completely dead pan and just act like nothing is happening. We encouraged people to wear disguises to the party to go along with the 'Spy' theme. The winners of the disguise portion of the party were my Grandma and my Dad's brother- Bob's family. They were awesome! Such enthusiasm and creativity! We loved it!!!!!

The party went really well. We opted to have a barbecue (despite the fact that it did snow on his party day . . . mind you it was April!). The food was delicious and we all had a great time. Downstairs in my Dad's movie room, we had the movie Spy Kids playing and the bigger kids loved it! The rest of us just sat around and enjoyed each other's company. When it came time to open presents, we were all anxious to
see Michael's reaction to Gina's gift. It was by far the biggest present out there and we were all in on the joke. See- Gina bought Michael the DVD Big with Tom Hanks. Gina did the whole 'box after box' gag and Michael had never seen that before. There was all this anticipation for him to get to the smallest box which was seriously under 15 over boxes. We kept telling him it was really 'big' and he kept tearing open box after box. When he finally reached the DVD- he wasn't happy at all. I think he said, 'I thought it was big!' and we all said, 'It is!'. All the build up and Gina might as well have given him some socks!

The funniest part of this story was when I was driving Damien and Michael to the airport the next afternoon (Claire, Matthew, and I stayed a few days longer). I asked him if he liked Gina's present. 'You mean the adult movie?'. He didn't make the connection that the movie he loves (which is Big) was the movie Gina gave him. I explained that the movie she gave him is the one where Josh Baskin makes a wish to a Zoltar machine to be Big. Michael thought about it and then perked up. Then he started screaming!!! 'You mean the one with the giant piano in the toy store?', Michael asked. I told him yes and he went absolutely nuts. With all the build up to Gina's gift, he really didn't look to see what DVD it was! Anyway, Gina was relieved to hear the story later that evening. We had a great trip and it was so nice to see everyone! And after it was all said and done, Michael's birthday season finally came to an end.