A Good Time Was Had By All

Yesterday we had Keith's birthday party. (Hello! My son turned six a week and a half ago--did I leave that out? Sorry!) Anyway, we postponed his party a bit due to the winter break. We didn't want Keith's party to be thwarted by all those folks who had plans to go skiing or Florida or whatever the week the kids were out of school.

We gave Keith the choice of venue: the museum or Adventure Landing. He choose the latter. AL is like Barfy Cheese's--only MORE FUN and NO annoying, singing RAT. Along with the usual token-eating fare, they have a nerf-ball cannon room, miniature golf, and go-carts. Of course, since this was the middle of freaking winter, we couldn't do the last two activities, but a bunch of five- and six-year olds are more than easily entertained by token-eating machines and shooting things at each other.

I chose to have the party at 10:00 in the morning. Initially it was because I have come to realize that I HATE those 1:00-2:00-3:00-middle-of-my-precious-Saturday parties. A party in the morning means that you still have the rest of the day to maybe get something done. But once we got there, we realized the OTHER benefit--there was practically no one else there, and we had the whole fun place to ourselves! And the other parents were thrilled about it too.

I'm feeling a bit smug here. AL is across town from where we live, but it never crossed my mind that no one on this side of town had ever heard of it. For a lot of parents/kids, this was their first time there. The kids loved it. The parents were sort of in awe. Why, yes, there ARE better places to go waste your tokens than Bary Cheese! And let me tell you, AL puts on a very well-organized party. I was consulted and kept in the loop about everything--and the hostess even wrote down the gifts for me. AL sold their services to quite a few parents that day. And don't I feel the all-knowing one for introducing them to the place! See, you East-siders! The West side DOES have its amenities, too! (There is a definite East-side, West-side war going around about here).

So, we played games, ran around in the ball room, ate pizza (bleh--the pizza at AL is just as bad as the pizza at Barfy Cheese's) and cake, opened gifts (G.I. Joes and Transformers and Power Rangers, oh my!), then went out to play more games. I took a some-what shy boy under my wing and went around with him to show him how to play some of the games. Keith ran around in the ball room with no reservations (he was a bit nervous in there the last time we were there). Keith and his best friend ran, jumped, shot cannons, and generally beat up on each other--like all best friends do. And we had three kids break down into tears when their parents told them it was time to go home.

Most enjoyable. And I didn't even have to take a Tylenol ONCE.