Isaac's birthday dinner

We really and truly had our hopes up when we bought this house that we could have a party for Isaac this year with our friends' kids his friends. We have a great backyard, a basement, and ample street parking. But life conspired against us. The weather here has been wishy-washy, so relying on the outdoors as an appropriate setting was not smart. Our basement is in need of finishing, and right now Dada is replacing the drywall the old lady and/or someone else cut out of the rumpus-room-to-be part (more on that later), so that is out of the question. We figured this is probably the last year we can get by guilt-free without throwing him a lavish party, so we kept it super-simple. Isaac's "party" was a dinner for 7 -- him, Jacob, Dada, myself, and our buddies Art, Sarah, and Ella -- at everybody's favorite restaurant, Red Robin. This is also becoming a birthday tradition, as we went there with Grandma and Grandpa O'Neal two days before Isaac's first birthday. We loves us some Red Robin. We go there whenever we can and pay way too much for our fancy-schmancy burgers with blue cheese and/or pineapple, mainly because this restaurant is so loud that if one's child was the human equivalent of a freight train the whole fam would still be welcomed. It is a place where my beautiful shouting birthday toddler monkey can be himself, have strangers wish him a happy birthday in song, and receive a free birthday sundae.

Here the birthday boy is captured in a series of pictures taken by Ella's parents on Ella's dad's new SLR camera. (please look away from any of the other pictures on this webpage that were taken with my ghetto-fabulous camera)

Sharing pretzels with Ella:



Opening his present from Ella:



Now it's mom's turn to open his birthday present from Ella, while he reminds everyone of what happened when Ella accidentally let go of her balloon:



It's a Band in a Box by Melissa and Doug! Here is Isaac contributing to the din of Red Robin in his own special way. We beat out some mad tunes on the triangle later:



After dinner our waitress arrived with even more balloons, the requisite Birthday Sundae, and a horde of other servers to serenade our special guy for his special day. He joined in, scat/bebop style. Both Dada and I think he will need little grooming to make him into an excellent front man for a rock band. We think he rather enjoys being the center of attention:











After a fabulous time at Red Robin with our buds, it was time to go home and open the enormous number of presents sent by the Grandmas and Grandpas. In summary, here is Isaac handing Dada a candle from his Melissa & Doug birthday cake (that one is from myself and Dada) over the toy pile:



I am thinking Dada better hurry up and finish that basement so we have some place for all this stuff to GO.

Happy birthday, special guy!