One house. One man. Many girls. Hilarity ensues.

I don’t know how my wife does it. I sure love my three girls, but there had to be at least fifty here, I swear. Michelle said so. But, she also said she counted Shaelin as twenty, so that means we probably only had 31 all told. Pardon me for a moment, a bulletin has just been handed to me… apparently, there were actually 13 girls here. I’m not sure if that accounts for the mayhem, but this appears to be a factual account, so we’ll go with it, Ron. (Uh. Heheh. Of course I know your name isn’t Ron. But that’s not important, right Danika… Darryl… David… Davyd? Uh, rats. I forgot your name again. Can I just call you Reader instead? Thanks.)

It started out innocently enough with some games. We led off with a creative variant on musical chairs played with carpet samples instead of chairs. It was a beautiful warm day outside (translation: it was an oppressively hot day inside), and anyway, there’s more room for 31 – I mean 13 – girls to run around. Even Shaelin got in on this action.

Next was the traditional platform shoe-shaped piñata (what do you mean, it’s not traditional?), and for the next 47 minutes 13 seconds these fearless young ladies pummeled the poor thing to death. Or maybe it was only 20 minutes, but some of them were on their fourth or fifth go-round before it started to show any significant signs of stress.

To wrap up game time we had a nice, sedate clothespin drop. Our champ ended up dropping six of nine into the wine carafe (which is otherwise used for water; what else?). Pretty impressive, to say the least.

No party is complete without injuries, of course, and we were fortunate to get through the party with only a pair. Early on, Mercedes fell and bonked her head (left) and skinned a knee. It was mildly disruptive but she got back out there quickly. Also, one of the neighbors stubbed her toe pretty badly. We patched her up good and she survived. We’ll be able to salvage the bathroom; there wasn’t too much blood to clean up.

Presents and then cake and ice cream followed shortly thereafter. Mercedes got yet another crop of toys (right), some of which she’s really into. She also got to pick out some Monsters, Inc. ice cream. it’s an amazing replica of Sully’s colors from the animated film. I have no idea what it tastes like. I’ll probably try it out later but I’m not hopeful. (We don’t eat much in the way of frozen dairy-based confections on my planet.)

Anyway, the gifts were a real hit. It was really a struggle to get Mercedes away from her new paper dolls and on her way to bed. Eventually the battle of wills lapsed into d?tente, and though I’m not sure why, I’m not arguing. We’re back to the normal nightly stuggles with the brushing of the teeth, the using of the facilities, the reading of the stories, and such. Glayvin.

More photos of the chaos can be found in our Picture Albums. Don’t be deceived by the orderly appearance.