Life With Boys

The birthday party that almost wasn’t. This will be funny one day — but I’m not quite there yet.

So, Saturday, April 18, 5:30 we are to meet at the gymnastics place for Morgan’s birthday party. We’ve invited his day care class — a dozenish kids.

5:10 arrive to find the gymnastics place is dark — and locked. Start making panic calls to no avail. Kids are playing in puddles left from the rain that morning and getting very wet in the process.

5:45 Shit. Now what? Head down the road to Chuck E. Cheese. Parking lot is FULL. Another disaster. Wait at Chuck E. Cheese is more than one hour. Little faces look at me expectantly. Parents are wondering what they would do it this situation and are relieved it is not them. OK — more now what.

The only guaranteed place I can come up with — everyone head to our house. (Of course our house is not clean or in any way ready for guests — oh well. Matt swoops in and starts shoving stuff in the laundry room and closes the door.) I go for the stash of juice boxes, sidewalk chalk, chips and bubbles and set them loose in the still wet backyard.

All in all it worked out fine. Morgan was super excited he got to have everyone come over to play. Kids ran around like crazy people and had a good 5-year-old time.

The aftermath. The Gym call on Sunday night — which caught me off guard and I was not in the mindset to pitch the fit I had been planning. Turns out our contract had the right day, their calendar did not. The person who made the mistake was fired. And yes, I am partially at fault. I did not call to confirm — it did not even occur to me — but it didn’t occur to Matt either I might add. We are supposed to be getting a gift certificate for summer camp — which is way more than my $25 deposit, but still, I’m not quite over it completely.