Payton's Birthday

Kathryn and I went down to Joliet on Saturday for my niece, Payton's, 3rd birthday (Terra's youngest daughter). It was nice to see everyone again, even though I didn't know half the people there. Obviously Scott's side of the family was there, so I was already at a disadvantage. And I can't really recognize many of my cousins on Pat's side of the family either, because I don't see them all that often. Add to that the fact that most of them are married, with children, and I was lucky to know about 25% of the attendees. But that didn't really matter, because we were all just playing with the kids anyway.

Terra and Scott put up one of those big inflatable "moon walk" things. I don't have any experience with those things, but this one looked really neat. There was a big slide inside, and the kids were reaching some incredible velocities by using blankets to zoom down. I tried it only once, and I found out why the "Rules for Safe Use" warned against letting any part of your body touch the slide without a blanket. I climbed to the top with Payton and Kathryn. I sat on the blanket, and they sat on my lap. I was unprepared for the speed of our descent, and that (plus their weight) caused me to lose my balance temporarily. I used my right elbow to right myself, and immediately regretted it. It suddenly felt as though my flesh was being burned completely off my elbow. I'm exaggerating a bit, but it still hurt a lot. When we stopped, Kathryn and Payton grabbed the blanket and went up for another run. I just laid there for a moment...

One thing I pride myself on: I'm pretty good at buying gifts for my nieces and nephews (probably because I'm still, mentally, about 10 years old). In this case, I had Kathryn to help me. I asked Kathryn to choose between some stuffed animals, and an animal hospital (with pretend medical tools, three little animals, and a little place to house them). She chose the animal hospital. When Payton opened her gifts, she kept going back to our little animal hospital, and asking Terra to open it for her. It took us a while to get her to pay attention to opening the rest of her gifts. Score one point for Uncle Michael and Cousin Kathryn!