Skating party

This past Saturday was Mathew's first official birthday party. He turned 7 on the 10th but for scheduling reasons the 27th was the selected date. After much research, phone calls, and discussion with the loving husband, an ice skating party was selected.

I spent most of the month of February worrying about how things were going to turn out. I've never done a skating party, actually never have done an actual birthday party at all so I was a little on the novice side of things. I had a general idea in my head any my mantra was "keep it simple" so I hoped for the best.

For the most part, things went as well as planned. I couldn't find any invitations with an ice skate on them so I went with the generic dogs in party hats theme. I also knew that inviting all 20 kids from Matthew's class was a recipe for chaos and disaster so I had Matthew look at his class photo and tell me names of kids he would like to invite. Unfortunately, the school district does not give out addresses and phone numbers so the 5 kids that did receive invites were the one's who had names in the phone book that I could easily look up. I did feel bad not inviting one boy due to the fact he had a very common last name and there were 10 of that name listed.

Three of the kids invited showed up along with two other kids who's parents work with Jim and have in the past invited Matthew to their birthday parties. Their families were also invited and showed up to skate with us too. I also invited Jim's mom, two sisters, and brother along with their kids. Due to a tae kwan do tournament that day, my niece Ashlynn couldn't be up there for skating but her and her family made it up later that evening for supper.

Of course when an actual date is picked a month before the event, certain problems don't present themselves until later on in the process. It turned out that the loving husband had his monthly out of town trip scheduled for the last half of the week in late February. That meant that any last minute running around would have to be done by me and 3 kids....yeah right. Knowing I had to do "goody bags", I made sure the buying of the items was done on a night when I could do this task alone. I had to laugh at the loving husband who was really in favor of not doing the bags..or in his words "why do we have to do these damn things anyway?" Yes, he does know why we had to do bags but he did ask me to not put the usual cheap junk in them. We did do some brainstorming but in the end he did leave the purchasing up to me so off to the dollar store I went. I will say that in terms of goody bags, I outdid myself. Each bag contained one bottle of scented bubbles (not those teeny tiny bottles they hand out at weddings), a yo-yo that lit up in the dark when used, a pencil, a hot wheels car, and a tootsie-pop. Thank you dollar store.

When it comes to cake, I have the ability and skill to make a decent birthday cake but knowing that the I was going to be on single parent duty during the time I would be devoting to a cake, I opted for the wonderful professionals at Hy-Vee to do the honors. I also had quite a few people that would be attending so a small cake would not do. My thanks to Carolyn who went with me and helped pick out a cake. Actually, she didn't have a choice, it was either take her in the morning before school or take Andrew in the afternoon after school and tired 3-year olds do not make the best shoppers. I wanted Matthew to be surprised and excited by the actual cake so I opted not to have him help out. Later that day my mother called and I told her that Carolyn and I ordered the cake for Matthew's party. Something must have gotten lost in that exchange because she then asked if I got a nice princess cake with pink frosting. She felt a little sheepish when I reminded her that it was for my 7 year-old SON. Anyway, the cake was marble with whipped frosting. Orange with blue trim and Happy Birthday Matthew on it. It was delicious.

Finally, the day of the party was here. The weather cooperated and it was a nice sunny day. Unfortunately, Jim had Hapkido class up in Brookings that morning and due to him testing for his next belt the first week of March he needed to be there. I also had teaching commitments that morning. There are several students in our tae kwan do classes that we give extra help to on the weekends. With this Saturday being one of the last practice days left before belt testing I had offered to come in for an hour that morning and help anyone who wanted to show up. With that in mind, I had a pretty tight schedule to keep so I was a little on the stressed out side.

I'd like to say I managed to get all my morning commitments accomplished and get to the skate rink in time to get everything set up for the party but of course I'd be lying. I did manage to get 3 kids showered, dressed and out the door in a reasonable manner. I also got all the goody bags made up and put in the van. I didn't forget to pack the bag with the plates and silverware. I even remembered the camera and to stop and get ice for the cooler so the juice pouches would be cold. However, I was running late and opted not to pick up the cake and ice cream beforehand and I forgot to pack the ice cream scoop. Thankfully, the loving husband was able to make it over to the store to pick up the cake and purchase the ice cream scoop. Being non-smokers, we totally forgot to pack a lighter. Thankfully the ice rink had matches.

As part of the cost of the party, I had paid extra to reserve a private room. Actually what I got was one of the locker rooms but it turned out to be the smartest thing I did. I was able to have a table to put the cake on and it was out of the way from the main area so my guests were able to stop in and warm up when they wanted to. I also didn't have to worry about any strangers getting into the cooler full of juice and water or messing up the cake. I had planned on skating but Andrew fell asleep halfway through the party so I was able to take him and give him a small nap.

The kids all had fun skating. I wasn't able to be on the ice with them but the loving husband did a wonderful job helping out on the ice. He took charge and made sure everyone was well supervised on the ice. The nice thing about doing a skating party is that everything is in one place and there is no need to constantly entertain active children. No need to worry about planning games or other activities. The other thing is the built in time table. Open skate ended at 3:30 so I was able to tell the guests that after the skating was done then cake and ice cream and out by 4. The parents of Matthew's 3 friends did stick around for a while and watched their kids attempt to skate. I also liked the fact that I was offering their kids a new and exciting thing to try.

After everyone was done skating, we blew out the candles and sang happy birthday to Matthew. Matthew blew out all the candles on the first try. Although it's fun to do at home, I did not use the trick candles on this cake. The mental image of Matthew huffing and puffing away followed by his friends helping him was a little too gross for me.

One of the things we did for this party was not have a gift table. At the last party Matthew went to the birthday girl asked her friends to donate to several charities she was fond of. Both Jim and I really liked that idea. I had thought to ask for cans of food but Jim really liked the donation jar concept. I talked it over with Matthew to make sure he was ok with his friends not giving him actual gifts. I had read in the paper a few weeks back that the local animal shelter was in need of food so I asked Matthew if he wanted to help the animals or if he wanted to help orphans in Haiti. He of course chose the animals so I wrote in the invitations that the jar would be set up for animal food donations. Mattehew collected $48. He's totally excited to go and buy the food, especially since I promised him that we could take it to the shelter and visit the animals. Matthew was not very thrilled when I made him make and write thank you notes to his friends.

After the party ended, we went back to our house for part 2. We had invited the family members over to have supper and open gifts. The month of February has many birthdays in the family so we try and get together during the month and do a celebration. Matthew and 3 of his cousins had gifts to open. I'm not sure which was the bigger hit..the Backugon stuff or the bike but either way Matthew got some very nice gifts.

Later that evening, I was upstairs with my sister-in-law Stacy talking when we heard Carolyn in the bathroom talking to her cousin Raelynn (age 2). After a few minutes of listening to the chatter, I looked at Stacy and decided to go investigate what the girls were up to. I walked in and asked Carolyn if she was showing Raelynn how to go potty. Carolyn looked at me and said "Nope, I'm showing her how to do a big girl wipe" and proudly finished wiping her bottom before flushing the toilet. I left the bathroom laughing.

By the end of the night we had three very tired children. The day was long but a lot of fun. I'm not sure what Matthew wants to do next year but maybe I'll bribe him into not wanting to do a party...

Yeah right:)