I finally had Sam's party

Kid parties make me nervous. Something about inviting a whole bunch of kids over that are all the same age and trying to keep them happy while also chatting with the parents. I don't know; it just makes me nervous. Sam's birthday was a month ago, and I had put off the party and put it off, but Saturday I finally gave him the party with his friends that he wanted.

He wanted a baseball party and we decided we would have it at the park near our house. That is part of why we waited so long. The weekends kept being cold or rainy, and I sure wasn't having an INDOOR 4-year-old-boy party. That would be insane! I swallowed all my perfectionist pride (alright...I don't have too much of that) and just let it be a very casual party. I wanted Sammy to wear his Cubs shirt and hat while Claire wore her Sox shirt and hat, but he thought his cubs shirt was too big and wanted to wear his old baseball shirt from a year ago. Whatever. I had to keep saying this to myself: whatever!

Here are some of the cast of characters: Liam, Ben, and Alexander. Ben is his buddy from school and the brothers on the outside of Ben live near our park. They are all very Sammy-ish boys and the red wiffle bats I bought for everyone soon turned into swords instead of bats, (surprise).

We brought a giant bucket full of water balloons and the Big Guy let the kids attack him with them. We also brought all the different kinds of sports stuff a little boy could ever play with: soccer/baseball/football. But the big hit was this stomp rocket that Ben got for Sammy. You stomp on a little pump thing and the foam rocket shoots up into the sky. They did that for half the time! Thanks Ben!

Sammy got the stomp rocket, a rocket ship from the planetarium, a paper-airplaine-designing book, a horn for his bike, (from his love, Cecilia) and a cd of kids music. But his favorite part of all was when everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to him. I had to go across the street to this nice Italian man's house to borrow a lighter for his candles, but it was totally worth it because he loved the singing so much.

I guess he really likes attention. Who knew? Happy Birthday party day Sammy-Sam.