Family Appreciation Day

Today may have been Patrick's most favorite day ever: he got to spend oodles of time running around freeeeeeeee and bouncing until his little heart was content in a bouncy house.  My back is screaming at me now for the immense amount of standing we did watching him go crazy, but it was definitely worth it.  I don't know if I've ever seen him so excited.

We spent the evening at Mike's work (police) family appreciation day.  It was a blast.  We were kind of skeptical at first, since they've never had this before and didn't know what the turnout would be or if it'd be 20-month-old kid friendly.  We were very much happily surprised and stayed for over 3 hours.

Before we hit up all of the bouncy houses and such, we did what all good parents do: we filled our kid with food before we let him loose.  Duh.

Luckily our genius idea of dinner before playing didn't backfire on us and it seemed like Patrick readily digested his dinner and didn't have any issues with it, uh, coming back up, during playtime.

Not kidding, for well over an hour Patrick ran back and forth between the bouncy house and the circus/carnival kids play area.  Back.and.forth.back.and.forth.  Mike enjoyed some free beverages and I kept guard of Patrick's shoes and jacket, just like any good mama would do.

Needless to say, we had to yank him out of the bouncy house and force his shoes on his thrashing feet when it was time to go because little diva did not want to leave.  Shocker.

We did stop by the giant slide on the way out and Patrick had ZERO fears racing up to the top of it.

However, someone got a wittle bit of stage fright at the top (don't blame him. that thing was tall!) so Mike raced up to accompany his little boy on the slide down.  Heart melt.

Then, it was time to go--right after we snapped some pics behind the wood cutouts.  We HAD to, right?!

We were a tad worried Patrick would uncharacteristically fall asleep on the way home, but, alas, he did not, and promptly got a bath and crashed soon afterwards in his bed.  Which, side note, thanks to my mama suggesting it, he now gets to read himself (and his immense amount of crib friends) to sleep with the one book we tossed in there--his favorite book, no less.

Here's to a wonderful end to the weekend, oodles of family fun with our police friends and family, and the start to hopefully a great week!  Have a good one buddies!