Happy Birthday, Gavin

Gavin turns 5 today. He starts flag football next Tuesday. He starts Kindergarten next Thursday. This is all quite overwhelming.

Quickly, before I get into the birthday play-by-play, I volunteered to coach the flag football team. They may have foud someone else, we'll see. But if not it will be me. Last night at dinner I was talking about how his team needed a coach. By coincidence, his team is the Giants. Gavin looked at me with some concern and said, "Daddy how come Tom Coughlin won't be the coach." I love a) that he knows the coach's name; and b) that he either thought his team was the real Giants, and/or c) that Coucghlin would coach his team. Too funny.

So last weekend we had Gavin's bowling birthday party. It was a lot of fun. He had 8 friends there, and we took over two lanes at the bowling alley. This is the way to do it. They have it all figured out. We got there and everything was set up for us; there was a guy who took care of everything from setting up the computer to chasing balls down the lane that wouldn't make it all the way to the pins; pizza was not only ordered and delivered, but the guy actually sliced it and put it out on plates; then when two hours were up he turned off the lights in the bowling lanes and cleared the tablecloths off the tables in a not-so-subtle-yet-perfectly-acceptable "be on your way" kind of gesture.

Then we went back to the house for a little family gathering. We finally seem to have figured this one out as well: we had the food delivered from an Italian place up the street, and we used plastic and paper products for everything. At the end of the night we sent leftovers home with people and then simply swept everything else into a trash bag. Far better than the parties we've had the last few years that required an incredible amount more effort.

Highlight of the day, by far, was Gavin's present from his aunts and uncles. And of course all the accessories from other family members. Let's just say it is going to be difficult to pry any of us away from the television as long as there is Wii to be played. I am not quite certain how I let all this time pass without getting one for myself. My shoulder is actually a little sore from all the bowling we've been doing.

So that was our weekend. And no today is officially the boy's birthday. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this post: next week is a big week. I'd imagine flag football and kindergarten should yield some interesting material. Hopefully I can stay on top of it and get something up here before our next family birthday!