Brighton's Birthday

I cannot believe Brighton is 7 already! He's not supposed to get this old! I know Justin already posted a note to him on his birthday, but now that I've finally sat down to blog (I've had ZERO desire to blog for the past few weeks) I'm going to post pictures of his "celebration". I put it in quotations because we didn't do much of a celebration this year. I decided a couple years ago that I liked the idea of doing a big birthday party every other year and just do smaller family parties on the off years. We had a big party for Brighton's 6th birthday last year in Georgia, so it wasn't in the cards for this year. When I asked Brighton what he wanted to do for his birthday, he said he wanted to go to the Phoenix Children's Museum. We got a gift card to go there from Grandma Jo for Christmas, so it sounded like a pretty affordable option to me :) I let Brighton invite four friends, hoping that we'd get maybe 2-3 to come (Adaira was also coming and we didn't want to have to take two cars). Well as it turns out, two friends couldn't come and a third got sick at the last minute, so I took Brighton, his friend Carson, and Adaira to the museum. They had a GREAT time and we probably could've spent another couple hours there but we had a big family dinner at our house with my side of the family later that evening that I wanted to get home and prepare for.

The kids probably spent half of the time playing with these tubes. They had a vacuum system running through them that would suck in the handkerchiefs and then pull them through the tubes and spit them out the top. The entire tube system was probably 25ft by 30ft so it was lots of fun watching the fabric move through it all. There were different entrance and exit points as well.

 Adaira had a ball grabbing as many handkerchiefs as she could and pushing them all in at once so they would rain down on her.

 Brighton showed up and he and Carson spent the entire time trying to create a "Grand Finale" while I had to keep reminding them to let some of the other kids catch the handkerchiefs too...

They all got lost (in a good way) on a huge jungle gym thing for about an hour after we first got there. It was three stories high!

Next we went to the craft room where the kids got to paint a castle,

 and make hats!

 Then they went through the car wash a few times...


 And then on to the FORT ROOM, where all there was to do was build forts. Brighton loved it until other kids came in and he had to share his fort and supplies. He was done at that point.
 Brighton did well at letting Adaira play with him even though he had Carson there.
 The next room was a shopping market where they could stock the shelves, be the shoppers or be the cashiers. Here Brighton is in the warehouse stocking the baskets with food right off the "truck"
 Adaira must be checking the expiration date on her ice cream purchase. The kid behind her refused to give up his cashier spot the entire time we were there.
 Adaira selling food and Brighton taking the cart to restock the shelves.
 Upstairs on the third floor they had a huge wall of foam noodles about 40ft square. How can they tell kids not to run in a place like that?

 I totally want to do a miniature version of this noodle forest in the basement someday...

Afterward we went and got ice cream cones at McDonalds and called it a day. Brighton had ice cream cake with his cousins later that evening so he did get to blow out some candles and be sung too. I think it was a fun day, though I think Brighton was bummed about not having a big party. Next year buddy!

Comments

Just Be You said…
Wow it looks like a GREAT time! I was curious if the Phoenix Children Museum was any fun? Your pictures clearly answered my question.
3/25/2011 11:07:00 PM
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