Birthday party at Seabase

This past weekend I got to pick Isaac up a day early because he was invited to his friend from school, Nicholas McCracken's birthday party, which was at Seabase in Greensburg on 2010/03/18. I feared that Lisa would not take him (as she has failed to take him to similar events in the past) so I had to take charge and make sure he was going to go. Luckily she said she had to work or something so she couldn't take him and it was alright for me to get him a day early to make sure he got to go. Common sense prevails, YAY!! In return I traded her a day next week to make her feel like she wasn't getting slighted. A day that I needed her to watch him anyway since I wouldn't be back from my vacation yet so see how awesomely that worked out! ;)

So we went. Neither of us have ever been there before and it was really nice. Tons of climbing stuff for kids, a small arcade, a mini golf course, even a laser tag course and a big cafeteria area by the party rooms in the back. We were in the Whale room. All the kids had a blast and I got to meet a few more parents of Isaac's peers. I'm not good at the social thing but I thought I did an okay job of mixing in and talking to a few people. Although I have ran into Chris, Nicholas' dad, before (PT Fall Festival last year) I think this was the first time I met his mom, Amy. She was very nice and commented that Nicholas was always talking about having Isaac come over to play. I said we should make sure this happens then. Garret's mom, Tina, was there who I see often when picking Isaac up at Penn Pals but I don't really talk to her. They were at Isaac's party last year when he turned 6. I also met some other guy who I forgot his name or who his kid was. I noticed he really was going around chatting it up with everyone so I felt more comfortable talking to him. I think we talked about how we got here what roads we took and how crappy traffic was everywhere.

Anyway while we mixed it up the kids got to run around like nutballs and climb and run and jump all over the place. For as big as it was it seemed kind of empty. Amy told me that it's on weekends you don't want to be here because then it is packed to excess. We did that for about an hour and then it was time to go back to the room. They had pizza first and then cake. What really impressed me was the young girl that worked there. She seemed to be trained very well. She handled giving all the kids food expertly and afterwards when it was time for presents, she was handing them off, disposing of the wrapping paper and then storing them in a bag so they could take them home later. She must have done this many times because she had it down to a science I thought. I got this big Crayola pad thing for Isaac to give to Nicholas for a present. I figured it was better than a toy gun and I didn't want to randomly grab something that someone else may have also randomly grabbed (which happened, he got two of the same Star Wars Playdoh thingies). Plus I figured it was educational to help him with writing and stuff. It was something I would have bought for Isaac. I hope the kid liked it. After presents they all lined up at the door and the girl gave them all a couple tokens to play games with. Before I could get out and find where Isaac went he had already blown all his tokens at the arcade in some train game machine. A ball rolls out onto the back of this train car and you can control how fast or slow the train goes. The point is to get it past a few spinning obstacles that are trying to knock it off the car and get it the whole way around the track. I guess if you make it you win. He still got a bunch of tickets for trying though. He cashed them in for candy. That was about it. I let him run around for another half hour or so and I noticed people were already pulling out. My plan was the whole time to walk over to Primani's while this was going on to get some food and watch the start of the Pens game. I just wanted to scope the place out and make sure he'd be okay but I ended up staying the whole time. It worked out better that way in the end. The whole thing only went on for less than two hours but I guess it seemed longer to him. All in all a very good time. Glad we went. Glad we were invited. I made sure that Isaac thanked Nicholas and his parents. I also thanked them as we left and we went home from there. I did miss the Matt Cooke fight live (retribution for taking Savard out a week earlier with what some consider a dirty hit) but that was okay. Fluery got his first shutout of the season and we beat Boston 3-0. The day was full of win!