This past weekend the kids ended up with invites to not one or two but three separate birthday parties, all around the same time, all on the same day. One party was scheduled for Saturday at 2pm, the second was an hour later at 3pm, and the third began an hour after that at 4pm. It was obvious that we couldn’t attend all three parties, and the ones at 2pm and 4pm were for family friends, so we ended up skipping out on the 3pm party (it was for one of Mason’s daycare friends) and attended the first and last ones.

The first party of the afternoon belonged to Jeff’s son Talon, who turned eight last week. Talon’s birthday was held at our local laser tag arena, Laser Expedition. The thing that sucks about summer birthdays — and I should know; mine’s in August — is that people get so busy with schedules and vacations that sometimes you end up with low party turnouts. That didn’t stop all of us from having a great time; Mason and Talon ganged up on pretty much everybody with their tried-and-true technique of “walk around and shoot the same people over and over and over,” while Jeff and I ran our butts off the first couple of games and adopted a slower “hide and shoot” strategy for the later ones. Mommy and Morgan arrived just in time for cupcakes and drinks, and (we think) Talon enjoyed his rock star accessories (a shirt and some rockin’ Hot Topic wristbands). You know you’re getting old when you walk into Hot Topic and immediately kids start asking you, “are you looking for a gift?” I’m guessing cool retro t-shirts don’t come in XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL …

Talon’s party wrapped up a little after 4pm and from there we shot over to Haylee (Willrath) Reyes’s fifth birthday. Haylee’s party had a water theme and the Reyes’ backyard was filled with inflatable water slides, a small pool and the longest slip-n-slide I’ve ever seen. For the kids, the highlight of the party was the pinata bashing. I’ve seen enough episodes of America’s Funniest Home Videos to know to get the hell away from kids swinging bats, so I did exactly that. For the adults, the highlight of the party (other than seeing and talking to everybody) was some classic Willrath brisket. Mmm, mmm! I got to spend fifteen or twenty minutes holding Andy’s son Sawyer, who’s three or four months old now (I forget). I had a good time teaching Sawyer the fine arts of air drumming and “doing the robot.” He didn’t seem to mind much.

I met Andy (Haylee’s uncle) when we were four-years-old; I met Jeff (Talon’s dad) in seventh grade. Back then I never would have imagined someday we would be attending birthday parties for each other’s kids — and yet, during the two parties, I had this weird feeling that somehow I knew all along things would end up this way.

Or maybe that was just all the the sugar talking.