Everything I learned this weekend…

Everything I learned this weekend…I learned from pirates!

Through this process of planning and hosting Tommy’s birthday party, I have learned a lot.  Just thought I’d share some of those tidbits here.

1) Planning a party is exhausting.  I guess I knew this before, but as I sit here today still feeling like I’m in a bit of a fog, I’m reminded of just how exhausting it is.

2) Things will not always go as planned.   

3) When things don’t go as planned, you don’t have time to stop and feel lousy about it.  You just have to keep going.

4) Always rent the bounce house from a place that does delivery and set up.  Usually I decide on a case by case basis which is more important, my time (and energy) or my money.  With this, I chose my money.  We rented the bounce house from a place that doesn’t deliver because their rental fee was $75 cheaper than most other places.  Aaron and I agreed last weekend, that pick up and set up on our own was worth it to save $75.  Two words…NEVER AGAIN!  We severely underestimated how much work it took to get it out of the van, hauled into the back yard and set up.  And I guarantee that it was even more work to get it back out front and back into the van when the night was over.  That thing weighed a ton!!

5) Shark fruit snacks do not do well in jello.  Don’t really know what happened with the ocean blue jello, but it was a disaster.  When I scooped into it, the jello seemed like it wasn’t set underneath.  The sharks had lost a lot of their color.  And a couple of the kids said that the sharks weren’t that good.  Perhaps I should’ve gone with gummy candy instead of fruit snacks.  Fortunately, it was so darn hot that many of the kids still slurped down the half set blue jello.  😉

6) Hawaiian punch ice cubes make everything better.  After we found that the jello was a flop, I quickly grabbed the stuff and served up the shark bite punch.  The “shark blood” ice cubes were a huge hit!!

7) Young pirates love a good treasure hunt.  I was so excited to see them all running through the house trying to find the clues.  It was one of the things that went exactly as I had imagined.

8 ) 8 kids is about the max I can handle in my house.  For most of the afternoon, we had just 7 kids running around (including my 2), and I was on the edge of my seat.  Besides the insane volume, there were several rough spots…doors slamming, kids fighting, and kids crying.

9) It’s not a party until someone gets a nose bleed.

10) Jumping in a bounce house makes you feel like a kid again.  Granted, we didn’t have these things at parties when we were kids, but it would’ve been a ton of fun!  After all the guests left, my sister and I got in with the kids and bounced around for about a half hour.  It was a great way to end the evening!

At some point, I’ll actually sit down with my camera and see what I took pictures of.  😉

Pirate Mayhem

Last week at this time, I was feeling completely overwhelmed with planning Tommy’s birthday party.  I had my sights set on bounce house in the backyard for the kids and a beer in my hand.  In between where I was and where I wanted to be, there stood a ton of cleaning.  I really had no intention of doing much of anything with the pirate theme that Tommy chose for his party, other than to pass out pirate goodies and include gold coins with the candy in the pinata.

Now that I’ve been able to get some of that cleaning out of the way, things really feel like they’re moving.  On Sunday, my sister asked me if I was doing anything with the pirate theme besides hiding the treasure chest (pinata) in the backyard.  At that point…nope.  Later that evening, I started to feel a bit guilty so I started searching for pirate party ideas.  Now, I have more ideas than I know what to do with, and am trying to figure out just how many of them I’m actually going to use.

I hope the kiddos come prepared for all sorts of pirate mayhem, cuz they sure are going to get some.  There will be eye patches, inflatable swords and tattoos.  They will have to walk the plank.  Hopefully they’ll get to play a rousing game of sink the enemy too.  In the meantime, they’ll be snacking on pirate peg legs, fish and cannonballs.  They’ll wash it all down with a splash of sharks blood punch.  I’m even thinking about making some Jell-o ocean blue.   They’ll have to complete a treasure hunt in order to find the pinata.  (And yes, there will be the bounce house too!)  I am on a roll, and perhaps I should be stopped. 

Sure, there’s still quite a bit of cleaning to do, and errands to run, but I feel much more optimistic about it this week than I did last week.  I’m sure that by Friday evening I’m going to be in an overdrive so high that I won’t be able to sleep.  Hopefully everything will go smoothly.  And the neighbors, they’d better just settle in for a long evening.  For all those nights when the boys behind us played night baseball games under a flood light…this is pirate revenge.

Arrrgh!  Walk the plank!