Noah's Dad

This time last year I remember wondering what it would be like to take our little boy to birthday parties. It seemed so far away. It seemed like something reserved for “older” people.

Little Kid Parties, Grown Up Talk

I wondered what parents did while their little munchkins were consuming countless pounds of birthday cake.  I attended my fair share of birthday parties growing up, and if my memory served me correctly all the mommies would hang out in the play room with their little ones, while the dads gathered in the back yard to drink Coors Light, talk about grills (the kind you cook on), how hard their latest home improvement project was , and how bad things have been at the office.

Yuck!

I don’t drink beer, thankfully don’t have to run the corporate “rat race” at some office, and my last home improvement project involved me spending four days trying to recover 1.5 Terabyte of data from one of my hard drives!  Not to mention I still take bubble baths (seriously!)  So I imagined being doomed to a life time of taking to Noah to parties while I sat in the corner reading RSS feeds on my iPhone. Awesome.

Thankfully I had it all wrong…..

Nerds Make Everything Better

Turns out that nerds have kids. And those kids have birthdays.  And those birthdays need parties!
WINNING!

John Dyer is one of my best friends, and author of From The Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology is one of the nerdiest guys I know.  If you want even more proof, check out his web development site.  Even I need an interpreter to translate some of the stuff on there! (By the way, I’m using “nerd” in its greatest sense!)

Not only is John a nerd (like me) but he also has two adorable children, and an amazing, caring wife.

When Noah was born she put together a care calendar which arranged for three months of meals while we processed everything.

Those first few months were one of the hardest times of our life, and we’ll never forget how much she blessed us by taking the time to do that.

Noah Rocked His First Birthday Party!

Noah was super pumped when he got an invite to attend their daughters first birthday party! And it rocked!   Noah had a ton of fun, and I learned something new about John, he bakes awesome birthday cakes!

One of the things they did that I thought was really cool was make several cakes, one being a “smash cake.” What’s a smash cake? Well, it’s just what it sounds like. It’s a cake…that you can smash! They made one cake for everyone to eat, and another for their daughter to SMASH! It was awesome. I think I’m going to steal that idea.

After all, creativity is forgetting where you saw it. 🙂

By the way, when geeks have birthday parities for their children things are a lot different then I first imagined. It turns out the husbands gather and drink juice boxes(and coffee), talk about the latest RAID back up system they built, and compare cameras and flashes! Now that’s my kind of party! I’m looking forward to lots more just like it.

Being a dad is awesome.

Being a dad to Noah is even awesomer.

What’s been your experience with taking your children to birthday parties? Do you have any funny (or not so funny) stories?