Happy Birthday, Sam! (or, where the hell do I put all these toys?)

Happy 5th birthday to my darling firstborn, Sam. We call you by many names - Uncle Tickle-Tom calls you Samuel Chase-me Belden (a totally appropriate middle name, we gave you by the way). Sarah calls you Sam-a-lama-ding-dong. We call you Sam-sam, or more often: Boo.

You are a friendly, social little boy - I love how you greet everyone by name, including the parents of your friends! (He must have inherited Daddy's salesman gene.) You LOVE your friends. So what better way to celebrate your birthday than by chasing 24 of your closest friends and cousins around a big room hot-air-filled jumpy things.

Lots of jumping and sliding going on:

I particularly love this one of Ellie. Doesn't it just scream "Wheeee"???!!!

Patiently waiting in line for the big slide. Yes, Daddy Pete got busted taking 3 kids down with him at once...

Sam and his friends had a blast, wore themselves out. There was a bloody nose (Connor), a few tears (Maddie) and lots of ice cream cake. Lovely, yummy ice cream cake. (I use the term "cake" loosely, here, because, to be honest, I didn't see any actual cake in it. It was really ice cream in the SHAPE of a cake.) It WAS delish, and there was no leftovers to nibble on later, because those little boys went back for seconds, so there was nothing to take home.

For Sam, this also meant presents. LOTS of presents. As in, dear God, where are we going to PUT all these presents? Pump-it-up also has the tradition of sitting the birthday person in this big inflatable throne and letting each gift-giver sit in the chair and help said birthday person open their present. (All the while, Mom is praying that, if the offered gift is something we already have at home, the birthday boy does not say anything to hurt the feelings of the giver.) However, if you have to open gifts at the party, its a great way to let everyone "help" open presents. Don't we all love to do that?

Notice the intensity as they tear off the paper....

And yes, thank you Jake for the coveted U2 CD. Sam can now add more U2 to his rock-n-roll repertoire.

Sam had such a good time there. I think the presents were really a side benefit to getting to play with Connor, Jack, Ben, Jack O. and all his other friends and his cousins. Best yet, everyone went home very, very tired....

So happy birthday little man! We loves ya lots.