Last of the party pics - Andre, Emily & Karen

Here's a photo of my wife, Emily (on the left), her co-worker Karen Todd and her boyfriend Andre Kerr. Andre is the artist who created the cannon in YoYo Joe's and the group of palm trees in the front of the store. He's very talented and we were very lucky to have him work for us.

Wendy & Graham on the Plasmacar

As mentioned in my post on the party, the Plasmacar was the unexpected hit of the party. Here's my sister Wendy riding one with Graham during the party.

Graham down the slide

Here's a good shot of my brother Tom with his son Graham - Graham is going down the slide on the pirate ship.

My sister Kris

Here's Kris in the game aisle at YoYo Joe's

Ethan rings em up!

Ethan handled the register duties for a bit, spelling former Mitchell's employee and former World Yo-Yo Champion Tyler Severence for a bit. That's me, by-the-way, behind Ethan holding my nephew Graham.

Party Pics - Tom Taylor

We got Tom Taylor to perform at our opening party - we met Tom years ago when he played at my brother Tom's annual July party. Tom was kind enough to agree to play our opening. It was a very weird feeling to have caterers, a singer and a bar at our store, but it was awesome!

Party pics - view from the ship

Here's a pic shot from the deck of the pirate ship - it gives you a good idea of the view from the ship out onto the store.

Party Pics - James at the wheel

Here's a shot of James - my future brother-in-law - at the wheel on the pirate ship. The ship's wheel is one of the details that Nate brought down this past week. He mounted it on the forward mast - it really turns!

Party Time!

Last night, we hosted our launch party at YoYo Joe's. It was our first official event. The whole point of the party was to introduce ourselves to Delaware - we invited a bunch of friends and family members and were thrilled with the turnout.

Let me backtrack a bit. We finished the pirate ship on Friday - it looks incredible. Nate and Kris (my brother-in-law - the shipbuilder and my sister) came down on Wednesday to finish the ship and also help us with other last minute details. My entire family was around - brother Tom, sister-in-law Elise - their son Graham, sister Wendy and brother-in-law Ric, my dad as well as Emily and Ethan, of course. Also joining us to help us finish off the details were Emily's sister Sara, her fiance James, my nephews Sam and Will and niece Katie all came into town on Friday. Sara and James put together Kettler tricycles and the Kettler rack. Sam & Will helped put together Plasmacars and other assorted stuff. Katie was a trooper and plugged stuff into the point-of-sale system. There were so many people at the store on Friday, I found myself coordinating tasks instead of actually doing anything. Our great friend Ann Lake not only brought us dinner from the Orient in Pennsville on Thursday, she hung around until the wee hours of the morning on Friday making sure everything was ready. And, the store looked fantastic.

Fast forward to Saturday - only a few details needed to be finished. Replace a couple dozen spotlights in the track lighting, hang fabric from the back of our wall near our palm tree grove and a couple other things. My brother Tom picked up the beer and wine for our party. One of our focus' at YoYo Joe's will be to buy local, so we got Twin Lakes Beer (despite their unwillingness to even call us back!) and Chadd's Ford Wine (again, despite their apparent lack of interest in calling us back). Luckily, the good folks at Kreston Wine & Spirits were happy to help us with our local selections. The caterers showed up at 3 or so (Toscana), and the guests started showing up 4:30 or so.

People kept arriving, and at our announced starting time of 5 pm, we had a nice crowd already. Guests raved at the store - maybe it was just them being polite, but I don't think so. People kept showing up. We invited all the employees from Mitchell's and many of them showed up. At the peak of the party, the store was packed and it was nuts. The unexpected hit of the party were the Plasmacars - we had one car out for kids to try, but soon found all of them were off the rack and kids were all over the store in them. I have to say, I have seen Plasmacars for years, but only when I actually got in one to try it did I realize how cool they really are (they can take riders up to 220 lbs!). We even sold a couple of them!

I thought it was funny when talking to one person at the party - I had neglected to mention to her about the pirate ship in the store, so I asked her if she had seen the pirate ship. She said, "pirate ship?," and I just said, "Oh, I guess I forgot to mention our pirate ship" and pointed to it. She was obviously shocked to see such a structure in a toy store.

One other moment that stuck out was when I was talking to my college roommate, Dale and my nephew Kyle came up. I realized that this was the first time all three of us had been together since we all went to an Orioles game in the mid-nineties. It didn't seem like it had been a dozen years since we went to that game.

It was a thrilling night and it went by way too fast. Before the party, I told Emily that I suspected it would be like our wedding reception - that we would hardly be able to talk to many of our guests, and miss some entirely. My suspicions were correct, I was sad that many of our guests I hardly had time to talk to anyone.

I was very thankful that Wendy decided that she would be the official party photographer and she shot lots of pictures. I will post some of them in subsequent posts...

What a night!