I told you I’d be back with some pictures, but I’m afraid you may be sorely disappointed. I don’t think I have one decent one from the party day except for of the cake. The lighting was SO brutal in the gymnastics centre – the pictures were all either too dark, too yellow or unmanageably blurry. No matter who took them, they sucked. Here are a few, anyway. The top set are from home so are decent. The bottom ones are from the gym, and I did my best to correct them.

We, with some help from Auntie, bought him a trampoline for his birthday. It was, by far, our best purchase in a long time. Both kids love it, their friends love it, and they get a ton of exercise jumping on it all day. Not safely, mind you, since it started to snow as the net was going up and we now have a couple of feet of the white stuff (contrast that with the barefoot two weeks and the tan lines we had evidenced by the 2nd picture above, and welcome to spring time in Canada!) so we still have no safety net up. We’re hoping it melts this week and it can go up before the weekend.

His way awesome cake was made by my girlfriend. I could (would, should) never do that.

Since his party was on the weekend, we celebrated his “real birthday” by making some healthy-ish banana-flax-hemp-chocolate chip muffins and a nice chocolate buttercream icing for them. Notice the red plate? It’s a tradition we’ve started in our house, borrowed from my parents, where we celebrate any special occasion or accomplishment by feeding the person on the red plate. It’s slightly aggravating that they’re only 30 bucks if you click that link, and I paid $60 locally. I hate it when that happens. Anyhoo, we love the idea and hope it becomes something really special for the kids to have their names added to the bottom of the plate regularly. I was looking at my parents’ plate over Easter and it was cool to look back at some of the occasions on which it was used. My personal favourite was “Jack’s first Christmas with his new teeth!” Bahahahahaha!

Primo ran and jumped and ran and ran and ran and stumbled his way through the foam pit for a full hour without slowing down. It was freaking awesome, but the pictures, as you can see, were not. We all had a great time. Above you see a picture of the Big Guy stuck waist deep in the foam pit, and to the left a picture of Primo trying to pull him out by the thumb. Later on, he started to just look at him and say “You can get yourself out!”

“The Grandmas,” as Primo calls them, drove up for the day and I have not one picture of my mom. I’ve got a few of my mother in law, but it’s like my mom wasn’t even there! Not only are they crappy, but they’re missing entire important people. And not even one smiling picture of him with his cake. Brutal. Next year, please remind me to bring video.