Laser Tag Party

This evening, we went to our buddy Nate's birthday party at a laser tag joint.  Julia and I have played laser tag before, but it was a first for Ethan and Madeleine.  As we sat in the preparation room getting instructions for the game, Madeleine equated our two team game to our two-party political system.

LASER TAG ATTENDANT: So there will be two teams.  The red team and the blue team.
MADELEINE: Mommy!  Red and blue!  That's just like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton!

Thanks to a snafu, Ethan, Julia and I all got put on the blue team, and Madeleine was stuck on red.  Of course, Madeleine cried about this, so I had to leave the preparation room and sweet-talk the front desk attendant into putting Madeleine on the blue team.  The Democrats were reunited once again.  Stronger together.  (Except the red team won.  Just like Trump.  They're going to make laser tag great again.)

We got to play four rounds of laser tag.  I ditched Madeleine after the first round because she cried the whole time and was therefore seriously hampering my attempts to be a high-scoring winner.  Apparently Ethan was better company, because when I ran into her during a later round, she exclaimed happily, "Mommy!  This is actually getting FUN!"

After the fourth round, the kids got pizza and cake, and then had time to play in the arcade.  Madeleine traded in all her hard earned tickets to get this premium prize:

She named it Melon.  It was totally worth 30 tickets.