Windsor Day 3 -- Dawson's 12th Birthday !!

We celebrated Dawson's 12th birthday while on our Windsor trip. He wanted to open his gifts immediately upon waking up. He received lots of money from relatives, an art kit, new sketch book, portfolio for his drawings and two movies he wanted (Doogal and The Ant Bully). He set to drawing first thing. We had plans to go to Warrensburg to Cornerstone Park, which is an indoor "park". It didn't really look that exciting for a 12 year old, but we wanted to do SOMETHING for his birthday. He invited Kyle, a friend from Windsor, and we set off. We took two cars because there was Aunt Kristen, Rylee, Kyndal, Dawson, Kyle, Aunt Rhonda, grandma, Eli, Brynne and me. We were really going to go because we figured the little guys would have fun on the play structures and there was a nerf gun room that we thought the older kids would enjoy. When we got there, they told us that all rooms were closed but the main room. All it had was a play structure, a baby play structure and a basketball court. Everyone was disappointed (could they not have posted that on their website before we drove 30 miles?) But we had already told Eli and Brynne about it, so we couldn't just leave! So we paid $20 for 5 of them to play, and Dawson immediately went to pouting. He was disappointed and it really was a worthless place. He got over that (after a little conference with me) and ran around playing tag with the older kids for a while. The little kids were having a great time! Aunt Kristen decided to take the older kids to Wal-Mart so off they went. We stuck around a little longer. Dawson chose to eat lunch at Pizza Hut so we met back up there. When did pizza become so expensive? We only ordered two large pizzas for $58 ???!!! I guess I am so used to the $6 take-and-bake pizzas from Papa Murphy's, which are tons better by the way. It was our audacity to have some to drink that did us in!! Oh well.

Our next stop was the movie theatre. We had made plans to go see "City of Ember". Aunt Kristen, grandma and Aunt Rhonda took Eli and Brynne home and I took the older kids. We rant to Wal-Mart to get snacks and then headed to the theatre for the ADVERTISED 1:45 p.m. movie. When we got there, however, we were told that this movie was sharing a theatre with another one and wouldn't be showing until 4:30 p.m. I was livid by this point! (Again, could they not post that on their website???) We couldn't stick around for another 3 hours with nothing to do, and we were having a family dinner back in WIndsor at 6:00 p.m. So, in another disappointing moment, we turned and left. Poor Dawson! I felt so bad that I suggested we go to Hastings, right next door, and get a new Nintendo DS game. They had "buy two used games, get one for 1 cent", so we took advantage of that. The movie for all of us would have ended up costing about that much anyway.

We took our games, and a couple of packs of Mad Libs to do in the car on the way home, and headed back. We had a nice dinner with family that evening. When Dawson was getting ready for bed he told me that the day had turned out pretty good. When I asked him "why?" he said that if all of those bad things hadn't have happened that he wouldn't have gotten his DS games and he did get his art supplies and movies. And, he said, "I am just grateful." That's what it's all about, folks!

Here's to another year, buddy! May it not be as frustrating as the first day of it!