Heavy Metal Sunday

Pretty typical week...the clouds are back and the rain has been off and on. Yesterday we closed the town house office down early and all drove into Salem for Logan's birthday party at Pietro's Pizzeria. I remember eating at Pietro's a few times as a kid. It was a quiet, mid-sized restaurant with a firehouse theme: fire hoses hanging in the entry, a brass fire pole with the bottom half of a fireman coming down from the ceiling in nothing but his red long johns, and lots of miscellaneous firehouse memorabilia throughout.
I walked in the front door and immediately looked up; there were the fire hoses, just as I had remembered. As I came through the second door I was greeted by the red underwear guy sliding down the fire pole and thought, "I remember really liking this place. This is going to be gr..." It was about then that some little kid coming toward me tripped and just about knocked me over. I got my balance and looked back to see if he had managed to stay on his feet as well when I saw it -the arcade room! A thousand square feet of arcades crawling with hundreds of little kids all racing from pin ball machine to alley bowler touting their long strands of purple redemption tickets. I remember thinking, "OK, so they've added a few things. This will still be nice," as we got caught up in the current of people headed toward the back of the room. I saw at least 10 other birthday parties set up and there were literally kids everywhere! Don't get me wrong, I like kids. I have 4 of my own and one on the way but this was a ridiculous number of kids!
We passed a large sign painted in neon paint that pointed the way toward mini golf and laser tag. Wow, they had really vamped the place up. We rounded the bend and caught Ian's eye. The birthday table was very nicely decorated with party favors, pointy hats and balloons, very cool. It was in the "party section" of the restaurant (though the entire place was packed with parties) and was in the middle of about 6 other party tables swarming with kids, though none of the other tables looked as festive (kudos, Ian).
To make a long, 2 1/2 hours of sheer bliss for the kids short: they got to play mini golf, eat pizza, have cake and ice-cream, and play the arcade games. It was a terrific party, though very loud and a bit chaotic even for a Dad who's used to a pretty rowdy house. By the end of the party, the boys had earned just over 300 redemption tickets at the arcade center, enough for each of them to get an inflatable electric guitar. We said our thank yous and goodbyes and then headed out to the car to make the trek back to Albany. After a little resistance, I agreed to blow up the guitars so they could play them on the way home.
They were really cranking it out but we had to make a pit stop at my parent's place. No problemo! They brought their guitars in with them and began power sliding across the kitchen floor and jumping off the furniture while they jammed like big time rockers. It was quite funny to watch as the sugar buzz completely took hold and had them acting like a heavy metal band on stage. Once again in the car, I cranked up the stereo, hit the interstate and they rocked all the way home.
This morning I was awaken by Johnny Cash in my living room. Apparently, the boys hadn't lost interest in their guitars yet and they thought Johnny needed a few more band members. Matthew found a hard rock station on the radio that I had to turn off at least three times since we got home from church and the guitars somehow went from from instruments of mass commotion to weapons of mass destruction. Matthew got poked in the eye, Isaac’s block house got knocked completely off the table in one giant swoop of Matthew’s guitar, and Isaac’s guitar kept knocking Abby over –though it wasn’t his fault (just ask him). So all three boys are now up in bed, all three guitars are now deflated and up in time out above the cupboard, and I’m left to myself wondering what I'll be waking up to tomorrow.