Ben's Birthday Weekend (Part 2) - "Ben's first Kegger!"

Ben's big birthday celebration was the day after his birthday.  Ben had friends and family coming from all over to celebrate with him!  Unfortunately since we were so busy preparing for the party we didn't take any pictures that morning and it wasn't until halfway through the party that I realized that we hadn't pulled the camera out yet!  How could we forget to take pictures?!!  Well we made up for it.    Here's a collage of pictures I put together from the party.  (click on the picture to enlarge it)

As you can see, we all had a great time in Ben's Backyard celebrating his birthday.  It was a hot day, but we all enjoyed hanging out with our neighbors, friends and family and we did our best to stay cool.

But wait...  where's Ben in all of these pictures?   

We need to look around and find him...

OK!  I found him!!

That's my boy!   Shaking his maraca's and trying to sneak some beer! 

Although this isn't far from what our day was like.. "Where's Ben?  Who's got him?"  Everyone was enjoying spending time with him and he got passed around so much throughout the whole day.    And for some reason, all the bigger little kids all wanted to hold him.  Ben didn't seem too mind much.  He loved all the attention and just went along with it.

Plus it was pretty cute too.

There was even a rare sighting of Uncle Gil playing with Ben while surrounded by children!

The funny part to me is that Ben just seemed to take all this celebration stuff right in stride.  It was like any other day for him, except with more people to hold him, play with him and feed him.  He enjoyed and took advantage of every second of it.  He's such a happy kid!  We're very lucky.

We did all the fun things that you do at a birthday party... 

We ate lots of food...  Sang Happy Birthday...

Opened some presents....

And then went and played in the Big Jumper!! 

Ben really liked the Jumper...  and his bone.

Here's a good "action shot" of Ben jumping on his butt.

Ben was very curious about the dog people though.  He couldn't quite figure out what was going on with them.  Are they dogs?  Are they people?

A karate chop to the nose revealed what was going on here..

ahh... she IS human!

In the end, we had a total of 61 people at our house celebrating Ben's party.  That's pretty good.  I don't think Jill or I have ever had that many people celebrating our birthdays.  It was great to see every one and we thank you all who came and helped celebrate with us. 

Can you tell that we all had fun?

Absolutely! 

Another way I could tell that everyone had fun is when I walked outside the next morning and found this...

A floating keg and empty juice boxes floating in the melted ice...

Now THAT'S a good party. 

(Since you never know who might actually read this blog, please note that no children consumed alchohol at our party as this picture might imply.  That would be very bad and I would never condone such activities.)

To escape a Part 3 of this series...  here's just a quick synopsis of the following day which consisted of two or three main activities.  Mommy & Daddy cleaned up and rested...  and Ben opened the rest of his presents!

And played with them all day!

What a great way to end the birthday weekend!