Slumber Party, Electric Boogaloo

Slumber Party.

Heh.

What a misnomer.

As you may or may not remember, Satchel had a sleepover for his fifth birthday last year in which he invited five friends. Well, for the following 365 days he and Jiro discussed their slumber party invitees for this year. Whenever someone crossed them, the monkeys' immediate response was, "Oh yeah, well YOU are NOT coming to my slumber party!"

The one kid for every year rule made sense last year, but now that Satchel was turning six and Jiro was turning four and they can add, we suddenly found ourselves looking at ten kids. TEN.

After much debate, the monkeys' final guest list actually had 13, but we insisted on a few cuts. Stella was not allowed to come this year, not because she is a girl, but because after a few hours she was bored last year. Miles N. was cut due to the fact that we haven't seen him since last year. (He may have possibly moved to California.) Five was cut because he's a good bit older than Satchel. (And the real reason he was on the list was so he could "defeat Bowser"--whatever that means.)

In the end we actually had seven boys show up...which was fine by me since I don't think I could have handled one more kid in this house! Especially a BOY kid. We had a very full evening of video games, wrestling, jumping, running, screaming, hoopin & hollerin, coloring, Star Wars, Ben 10, Power Rangers, and Transformers. By 10pm we actually had one very tired boy ask if he could go home. (It was a smart decision on his part since most of the others didn't fall asleep until well after midnight. Rumor has it that Jiro and Kai were up until 2am!)

Much to my dismay, half the kids were up by 6:45am, and the other half were up by 7:15am. And the very nice dad who came by at 9am to see if we needed any help, saw me in my Peace Corps issued birth control glasses that are now held together by a safety pin on either side.

The morning was packed with more video games, more coloring, pop tarts, and Cocoa Krispy cereal straws. (The latter officially made me the coolest mom in town.)

Chip and Connor joined us around 9:30am and we all headed to the park for some playground action, a hike, and GUM. (The monkeys were not allowed to distribute the gum indoors.)

And as you all know by now, we saw our first ever poisonous snake on the hike, which I'm sure made everyone's parents (most of whom are teachers at the school) really happy!!

It certainly was a party that no one will soon forget.

My pictures:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
(The reason Satchel is pouting over his birthday cake is because Jiro blew out his candles. Twice.)

Chip's pictures from the hike:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Next year, they can each have ONE kid spend the night. ONE. Preferably the kind that gets sleepy at 10pm.