Brennan's Fourth Birthday.

Yesterday was a very long day indeed. I was on my feet for 12 hours. Literally. The only time I sat down was when we were in the car going and returning to and from our destinations. It started with Community Day in Byram. Chad cooked over 300 hamburgers and I helped with crafts. There where people everywhere. It's great to reach out to people in the community, but it's tiring. Brennan had a good time, too. Some of his friends were there and we had a huge inflatable space-jump with a slide that he spent most of the day on. His party was at Gatti Town at 5:00. Which brings me to my next topic.

I will never, ever, ever have another party there, nor will I ever attend a party of someone elses there. It was ridiculously unorganized and chaotic. They didn't have our room ready on time. When they finally brought us into the room the tables were dirty and had not been cleaned. There was a dirty plate on the table. My "party hero", as they so claim, was no hero at all. She stalled for time. The balloon bouquet that is part of the party package consisted of four balloons tied to Brennan's chair. She asked me which type of pizzas I would like for the kids. I got to choose two. I said pepperoni and cheese. After 30 minutes with 11 kids bouncing off the walls and all of the parents standing around they finally brought the pizza. It was pepperoni and sausage. So some kids had to wait that much longer for the cheese pizza. Then my party hero comes and tells me that only 25 people including the kids and the hero can be in the room at a time. I can understand that. If they had told me that AHEAD of time. How am I supposed to start kicking people out of the party room? We were well over 25 people. The whole ordeal was just that. An ordeal. It got so bad that my mom saw the stress I was dealing with and had a nice little chat with the manager on my behalf. I ended up getting $50 off my total party tab, but it still didn't take away the lack of organization on THEIR part. Then at the end of the time limit, the kids were to the point that if there would have been chandeliers, they would have been swinging from them. I'm surprised they weren't hanging from the ceiling tiles. They were under the tables, on the tables, and everywhere in between. Instead of bringing the kids their game cards BEFORE she gave me my bill, she brought my bill first. Which took a good TWENTY MINUTES. Then after we signed the receipt we still had to wait on her to bring the game cards. Once we got out to the game area it was not any better. All I'm going to say without saying anything too terribly bad is this: Every weekend the Future Thugs of Jackson must come hang out there. That must be the meeting place. You could not turn around. And oh-so-rude were they. At one game two buddies were playing a game side by side and instead of them taking their turn and going to get in the back of the line to let someone else have a turn they kept swiping their game cards. Finally on the fourth swipe I had to get a little nasty. My patience was gone.

But, after all was said and done, Brennan was oblivious to the stress his parents were dealing with, and had a wonderful time. He got some great things and he's had a really fun weekend. Right now he's wearing his new tool belt and carrying around his new tools in his toolbox repairing things around the house. Now he's outside taking his tools out to his new house and he and his daddy are putting together his new grill that he's going to put on the back deck of his house. So, I'm just glad he had a good turnout at his party and he had a good time. And I'm glad that this weekend is almost over. I've still got one more function that I have to be a part of tonight, then I can return to normal tomorrow. This weekend has been wild. I came home from church and stuck the heating pad on my back and became a vegetable for a couple of hours. It felt good, too. And I don't really feel guilty about it. Other than my house looks like a disaster area. Whew.