The Houghs: The Cannononball's Sixth Birthday Weekend (feat. Father's Day)

Bam.

Hi folks,

I'm not one to toot my own horn. I don't own a horn, honestly, and even if I did I sure as hell wouldn't know how to toot it.

Father's Day, therefore, isn't something I'm necessarily "pumped" about. It's just another Hallmark holiday, and in our house this one means Kris lets me sleep in past 7am and she gets up and deals with the kids. When I do wake up - which is always before 8am anyway, because my kids are loud - I get presents. Usually this is a bottle of whiskey from Kris (awesome) and a bunch of handmade stuff from the kids (I'll say 'awesome' here as well, 'cause if I didn't I guess that'd make me a shitty parent.)

Anyway, Father's Day is always eclipsed by the far-more recognized birthday of our eldest daughter, Alayna. Since Father's Day is always on that Sunday in June, it's usually observed the day after we observe Alayna's birthday, as her birthday usually falls during the following week and Saturday's the Party Day of the week. This means my day is sandwiched in among the Cannonball's multi-observed anniversary of her birth.

So here's how we spent Alayna Fest '14 (there will be no further mention of Father's Day, as I'm no longer important as of writing this):

Kris, stressing out over a birthday cake - which NEVER happens.

Alayna also wanted a Frozen cake for her birthday, so we just said 'screw it' and reordered the exact same cake topper that we used for Abby's cake. The cake was smaller this time around 'cause we were keeping her birthday simple this year - just having the Voigts over for cake and presents. Instead of throwing a birthday party for her this year, we opted to purchase annual passes to Aquatica instead (more to come on that later.)

While Kris ran errands, the girls and I decorated the kitchen. Well, they told me where to hang crap up , so I really don't want to take credit for this.

We were lazy this year and didn't feel like spending money on party decorations. The kids don't care about them that much anyway. So, therefore, we just reused a bunch of leftover decorations and had ourselves a good ol' fashioned hand-me-down birthday party. Booya.

Birthday girl

This was a disaster.

Behold - chaos.

Alayna recently discovered pop - namely, Sprite. We never introduced it into the house, but she tried some her cousins had a month ago and loved it. This has become her favorite beverage, so she was pretty excited when we bought some for her party (along with some plastic champagne glasses, of course.)

Pizza party

Jack and his bizarro dad

Alayna busts out the violin to entertain party guests

Adam takes a turn

Jack cops a feel

The Voigts were lucky enough to stumble across Frozen dresses at Target, which, obviously, were huge hits with the girls. . .

Alayna has this weird tendency of becoming over-the-top obsessed with something, but only for a week or two. After that, she no longer cares about it. Not in the slightest. This makes buying toys for her a real pain in the ass. . . not that she really plays with toys. If you asked me 'Hey Brian, what does Alayna like to play with?' I'd be stumped. She doesn't like anything.

Gift cards (like the Justice card, seen above) are a safe bet, but one of the things she really wanted this year was - wait for it - an alarm clock. Seriously.

What kind of kid asks for an alarm clock for their birthday?!

She's big into arts and crafts, as well as jewelry, so these jewelry-making bead sets went over well. . .

As did the vanity.

For Alayna's birthday, we all went to Aquatica to purchase our annual passes (like I mentioned before). . .

Aquatica's one of Orlando's more popular water parks - which is saying a lot, since there's a ton of them down here. It's main draw is that it's closely affiliated with Sea World (its owner) and has marine animals like dolphins and turtles and fish there. This dolphin tank (above) has a water slide tunneling through it, though honestly one moves so fast going down it you're only catching a fleeting glimpse of the dolphins if you see them at all.

The male tortoise was chasing the female around in circles, obviously VERY slowly. I'll give you a couple guesses what he was after.

Walking towards the kiddie area of the park. . .

Aquatica is a pretty big park, and is known mostly for its superior water slides. It has a wave pool, but it sucks compared with Typhoon Lagoon's - pretty small.

Its kiddie areas, however, are better than Typhoon Lagoon's - there's a couple of them, and they're huge. We actually haven't explored much of the park yet, as the majority of our time is spent here.

All smiles at a water park, of course.

These water slides were pretty popular with the girls - they'd go down and then run up around for another go at them. The area's closed off to the rest of the park, so the kids were free to run around without fear of disappearing off to God knows where.

Some 'faster' slides.

Hijacking a double-tube from one of the slide rides

That's the name of the kiddie area we were in - I had forgotten what it was called.

This other kiddie area was absolutely insane.

The girls were too scared to go up into the water-spraying play area itself, but
they loved shooting the water cannon harmlessly into the pool water. Of course.

Toweling off and heading home.

Alayna's official birthday was celebrated in the Clubhouse at Sunchild. Abby, who had been throwing a tantrum about going, was eventually allowed to join.

As you can see from the pics here, Kris went with 'quantity' over 'quality' with this cake, knowing that there were dozens of little kids to feed who weren't going to give two shits about what the cake looked like.