Where a Kid Can Be a Kid

Tonight John and I took the boys to Chuck E Cheese or as I like to call it, purgatory for adults. Big kids cutting in line for drinks, two small children at the ticket redemption machine putting in 200 tickets one ticket at a time, taking 15 minutes for a child to choose between a plastic spider and a glitter tattoo. It is where good parents go to be punished. That said, nothing beats the smile on the face of a little boy who just successfully made a basket for 2 tickets or found a balloon bicycle to ride.

John was on Ben duty and I was with Joshy. We played skeet ball, shot mummies, shot baskets, jumped rope and watched John play a game where you hold on until physically in enough pain to let go. I walked away when it started smoking. My personal favorite was playing this game with Joshy where you hit the screen with hammers trying to kill all the spiders, cars or any other "bad" thing in that particular stage. Not to toot any horns but someone (i.e. me) managed to get in the top 20 high scores of all time. In your face, 7-year-olds!

We walked away with 4 sticker sheets for Ben and a plastic popper thing for Joshy. By the time we got home, Ben had taken all the stickers off the sheets and stuck them together in one big wad, which he wore on his shirt while him and his brother ran around in our yard with the neighbor boys. It was nice to see them so happy. And nice to not be the parents standing underneath the ceiling play tubes begging for Jackson to come down.