Toad's

We spent a few hours at Toad's yesterday for Ben’s birthday activity. We had a blast. Ben went to a birthday party there in November and loved the laser tag, so he wanted us all to try it out. Since Abby is too small to wear a vest and run around shooting a laser gun, we recruited my mom to come and hang out with us. She and Abby had a root beer float from the snack bar while the rest of us played. Our teams were boys vs. girls and Nate and Ben kicked some serious bootie. It was more of a workout than I was expecting, but loads of fun. We are looking forward to when all of the kids are a couple of years older and we can go and play for hours.

(Omega = Malinda, Centaur = Emily, Avenger = Elise, Whizzbang = Nate, Priest = Ben)

After laser tag, we played a round of miniature golf. Nate wrote all of our names on the little card, but we abandoned the idea of keeping score before we finished the first hole. It was pretty much a free-for-all. Abby gave up on playing altogether by the third hole and spent the rest of the time climbing over and crawling under parts of the course.

Then we spent some time in the arcade. I hadn’t forgotten my plan to avoid arcades, but the passes we bought for the kids included $2 for the arcade and we paid for Abby before we knew that she would be free, so we had some extra credit to blow. It was actually pretty fun. Nate and I even played a few games. I was a brat and left Nate with all four kids to cash in their tickets at the prize counter. He did a great job of moving things along, and the kids were all thrilled with their new three-note harmonicas.

We stopped at Arby’s for lunch before taking Grandma home. It was a fabulous day and hopefully helped Ben come to terms with the fact that his birthday is on a school day (he is not happy about that).