Happy 4th birthday!

Today the boys turned 4!

Annabel organized a party at "Pump it up", a place up in San Carlos with a big room filled with inflatable stuff - bouncy houses, slides, obstacle courses. It was a good crowd - 2/3 co-op kids and 1/3 friends from school/neighborhood. They had a great time - lots of running around and sliding/playing. It seemed like they had fun seeing some of their school friends again.

We closed with pizza and a dora cake. Due to a miscommunication with the place, the pizza showed up almost 30 minutes later than we expected, which was a bit of drag - lots of hungry kids at the end of playime! Otherwise, it went off quite well.

It's amazing how much of a difference another year makes - this year the kids were all so independent, and the food was relatively orderly with no major spills/meltdowns/etc. Another difference from a year ago was that the party was almost half girls (from their school - Anya, Claire, Molly, Bridget, Duff, Kate).

Despite the request for no gifts on the invitations, we of course got things from almost everyone who came - all great stuff. Our gifts for the boys were new bikes - 16 inch specialized mountain bikes. They were pretty excited, and we've had a couple of rides with them. They are still learning how to ride them - Jackson in particular is easily distracted and loses his pedaling rhythm/momentum. It's been almost 2 months since they rode at Black Butte, so there was a bit of a relearning curve. Dillon has been pretty tentative when faced with any kind of downhill slope (e.g. our block on Sterling Ave).