Eddie Turns 9!

Edison celebrated his ninth birthday here in Nauvoo. Although we celebrated with family and friends before heading to Illinois, we didn’t skimp much on the celebrations here. We started the day by opening presents, then at Eddie’s request took to Grandpa John’s Café for their breakfast buffet. Grandpa John’s is one of only a few places to eat in Nauvoo, but it’s good, so I was happy. With the buffet, I was able to have both pancakes and French toast, so who can complain about that? After breakfast, we swung back home for a few minutes. On our way home, we stopped at the Joseph Smith Historic Site to pick up a package that had arrived from Melanie’s mom. This allowed Eddie to open up even more birthday presents before we headed to the city of Burlington, IA, approximately 35 minutes away.

In Burlington, we spent the bulk of our time at FunCity. FunCity is appended to some hotel casino and offers various forms of entertainment, such as laser tag, a kid-friendly race track, and a large arcade. We hit the race track first. Neither Eddie nor Peter were tall enough to drive one of the faster race cars, but they each took a turn racing around in the slightly smaller cars. Beegy was too nervous to partake of this attraction, so he sat in the stands with Melanie and me. After racing a bit, we headed to “Ballocity” (rhymes with “velocity”), a play land area of sorts with tons of small, not-too-hard balls. There are vacuum tubes that can suck them up and launch them at people, or dump them into a large, overhead basket that eventually tips and spills all over the kids below. It looked kind of cool from what I could tell. After Ballocity, we took the kids to do laser tag. Eddie got nervous about the laser tag being in a darkened room, so he backed out at the last moment. Peter and Beegy played, and then Eddie wished he had. We let them all do another round, but not without first going back to the Ballocity area and letting Beegy do “Sky Tykes,” a kind of obstacle course (sort of) where kids are harnessed in and then make their way across various little bridges. (There is an adult version, too, that is much higher and more likely to result in falls.)

After spending plenty of time at Funcity, we took to Burger King. Eddie requested it for lunch, having noticed it as we passed it shortly before arriving at Funcity. We then returned to Nauvoo, where the kids had “Kindle time” (which more accurately should be called “video game time”). For dinner, Eddie requested pizza from Casey’s, the local convenience store that also sells pretty good pizza pies. (They are chewy and cheesy, but don’t hold up well with multiple toppings.) As we ate the pizza, we watched Charlotte’s Web on Netflix. After the movie and pizza party, all three boys slept on the living room floor.

It was a good birthday for Eddie, and we all enjoyed ourselves. I can’t believe he’s nine years old. It’s old enough to make me a bit sad about how much time has flown and how short the remaining years of Eddie’s childhood will be.