OU-ed up for nothing

I picked the girls up early from their mother's so we could attend at least part of an OU/Texas watch party, which we were a little late for, despite our rushing. As has become traditional, the girls were OU-ed up for the party.



We had to leave at half-time to attend a birthday party Darby was invited to, I think everyone had fun. There were many other kids there, plenty of food, and a puppy, which is always enough to make my kids happy. Darby is such an animal fiend that you could lock her away with the animals and she'd be plenty entertained. While I would have hoped for different, it turns out we got to see the good half of the game.



As I was as unprepared as always, we had to swing by a store on the way to the birthday party to pick up a gift. Time was real tight though, so after picking up a present and racing across town (again), we barely made it to the party with five minutes to spare. The party was at Incredible Pizza, the same place where Shelby's party was back in August, so the kids were brimming with excitement.

So the girls got to have a couple hours of fun, but it was tainted at the end by the fact that we needed to leave, but once again Shelby hadn't yet finished with her game-playing. She still had credit left on her game card and was throwing a fit about not getting to use it all up. And also, Darby "got lost", which added to the tainting. As she likes a wider variety of games than her sister, I let her roam the game floor with less direct supervision than Shelby. I followed Shelby around everywhere she went and I told Darby to keep an eye on where we were. Apparently she did not do that, couldn't find us, and so went to the front desk to have me paged. It just so happened that it was time to leave when I heard the page over the PA, so we were about to round Darby up anyway. When I got up to the front, there was Darby, bawling her eyes out because she couldn't find us. I don't think she'll do that again.

So we were trying to get out of there because we were going to see a movie (like we didn't do enough in one day as it was). Shelby was still griping about her game card, though, so I suggested we might come back later and we all got our hands stamped. Trouble was the fit-throwing and lost-getting created some delay and we were down to twenty minutes until show-time.

Rushing around for the third time today, we did actually make it before the movie started, though we missed a minute or so of the pre-movie featurette. We were there to see Wallace and Gromit, and there was a Madagascar Penguins short flick showing before the movie. Both the short flick and full feature were quite good as it turns out. I was rather surprised at how much I liked the seemingly silly movie. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that it was better than the Corpse Bride in overall enjoyment (though not in animation quality).

As promised, after the movie, I took the girls back to IP so that Shelby could use the rest of her game card. I then re-charged both girls' cards so that they could play a little longer. That might have been an error, parentally, though the girls had plenty of fun. The thing I most don't like about such places is the waiting in line for the cheap prizes once the kids have won all the tickets they can. Ironically, I'm pretty sure that would be described by the girls as their favorite part.

After the almost non-stop day, I'm pretty zonked, and Darby fell asleep in the car on the way home, so she is too. I think Shelby would play more games if I let her, though. She almost never falls asleep in the car, including tonight, regardless of how much running around we do. Where does she GET all that energy (my gut feeling is to say she sucks it from me [and those around her] somehow)?