Will turned 11 today, which capped off a fine weekend of birthday oriented activities for the boy. Things got underway in earnest on Sunday with a trip to Zap Zone. Basically, it’s a place where you play laser tag, and, when not involved in combat where you shoot people on the other team with beams of light, you play arcade games. The web site says it is a “family fun center,” but it seems more like a teenage boy who hasn’t quite caught on to the whole girl thing fun center– though to be fair, there were several women/young mom-types playing in one of the rounds. I thought it was kind of fun; Will and his friends thought it was fantastic.
During the day today, Will and I took some time and went on a bike ride/picnic through Gallup park. We went out to this island of sorts in the river that Will and I had “discovered” on a previous ride. The idea was to have some quality time in a quiet place, but the park and the island were both pretty busy on this last day of the summer. Still, a nice time.
And then this evening we went with the DeWapps to Ichiban, a Japanese Steakhouse and Sushi place between Ypsi and Ann Arbor that Will is especially fond of. This is one of those places where they do the whole performance in front of the grill– probably not as good here in Ypsi-Arbor as it might be in the big city or in Japan, but still a lot of fun.
Here’s a minute’s worth of video highlights from the cake scene at the end of the Zap Zone party and from Ichiban:
I didn’t get the singing at Ichiban, but it involved more gong playing. As I think the video shows though, Will was pretty thrilled with the whole thing, so that’s all that matters. That and no one got hurt.
And tomorrow, it’s off to school. Finally.