K's Birthday Party

Since K has a Christmas birthday (which is actually also my birthday, he was born on my 20th birthday) he never really gets a birthday party.  He has a party two years ago for his 7.5th birthday but we never threw one last year.  So he was overdue for a party so we decided to through him a "Happy 9 1/2-th Birthday!".  Becasue of the layout of our house, having a bunch of 9 - 10 year old boys over was not appealing at all so we made it a 'destination' party of his choice.  He got to pick from lazer tag, bowling or a movie.  Since a friend had just had a movie party he decided to go with lazer tag.

We invited seven kids to go (to make it an even eight) but one couldn't make it so it was K and his friends - A,C,N & T from his class, B from one grade up and J from one grade down (the just live up the street and are good friends of K's).  We booked everything for the 17th and it was real easy as the lazer tag place also offered a package for two games of play, pizza and pop for all of them.  That left not that much to do.  We went over at the beginning of the week and let him pick out which cake he wanted (He decided on a cake that had ice cream cones cut in half and filled with icing all around the cake and it to be done in green) and mom also got a pack of cupcakes in case the kids didn't like the chocolate cake.  Mom picked up some vanilla ice cream, some cotton candy and some 'sprinkle party cake' ice cream to bring along with us as well.

(Moment of honestly here; Beware of ranting and annoyance)

I will admit at this point that I wasn't too happy about this party.  When we had his 7.5 party mom complained about it all and said that she was never going to do this again and I was in charge of birthdays.  Over the last two years I have asked multiple times (for his 8th, 8.5th and 9th birthdays) and she kept blowing it off.  Once my dad decided that he was going to have a birthday everything was set up in the matter of days with no one asking me about it.  I didn't find out about it until the date had been booked for the party!!  After that, anything I questioned about the party I got snotty remarks about how I can never be pleased and just want everything done my way.  I only questioned two things - What kind of pizza and to see if just a plain cheese one could be ordered (it was set up as just pepperoni that was being served) seperatly to be ordered for the party or if we could pick up our own food to be ate there during the party.  Well neither of these questions were even asked of the place so K had to have supper before we left for his party because he would not like any of the food there (to me that just seems so wrong!).  The second issue is that I asked mom multiple times to find out if we could decorate the place to maybe have a theme for the party.  I had even said I would go in early to set up and decorate but was told it wasn't needed.  I mentioned about how K had pointed out a bunch of decorations in the store that he thought were 'cool' but mom still never asked and basically told me to forget about it and that it wasn't important.  I had wanted to do decorations so that I at least had some input into the party but was shut down repeatidly.  Then I was really pissed off as mom decided that me, her, B and J would go in early to see if anything needed to be done and in the box was a handful of decorations to be put up!  Nothing K would have choosen mind you but still.  I worked at getting everything out on the table (cake, goodie bags, plates, presents etc) and for it to look nice and I tried to keep it that way and not let mom or dad put non-necessities on that table but it was a hard fought battle!

(End of rant, back to the party)

Mom, K and I went in to town on monday to figure out what we were doing for grab bags (or loot bags as mom kept calling them even though K had no idea what a loot bag was and questioned every time she said it).  We were just going to pick up the normal dollar store type of stuff but then mom decided that she would rather get a few actually good toys instead of a bunch of crappy toys.  So in the bags ended up - a tech deck, pack of go-go's, bookmart, ipod eraser, aero chocolate bar, tongue tattos, 3 pack of gliders, fruit roll-up, fizz candies, high bounce rubber ball and a small water gun.  Since mom and I were working at the book-fair that week, we had to fill the bags up on wednesday to get them all ready to go.  Only one small problem was that the gilders didn't fit in the bags so we had to give out a bag and then the package of gliders.

So friday comes along at mom, B, J and I leave a little bit early to go and get things figured out.  We get in there and I put out the cake, cupcakes, goodie bags etc on the one table that they have and we got enough tables and chairs that we would need.  There is a 'ball room' in there that is a large room with a netted ceiling and one wall that has a soccer / volley ball in it for the kids to play.  The kids all played in there until everyone had arrived.  The told us they could go in for a game of lazer tag at this point so off the went.  However, about ten minutes later we notice that another group is going in to the 'arena'.  I was kinda annoyed by this as we had booked a party and shouldn't that mean that our kids all got to go in at once with no one else or other groups in there.  Mom and dad just brushed it off but I went out and talked to the guy in charge and told him my thoughts and then he said that he would make sure their second game was just them.  The pizza was delivered about half way through their first game so when they got out we had supper (20 slices of pizza for 7 kids and 3 adults) and the kids went to play in the ball room.  Some time passed and then the arena was open so our kids went in again and this time no other groups were allowed in thankfully.  I asked the guy if I could just get a few pictures of them inside for my scrapbook and he told me to just go ahead in and that I could stay as long as I wanted to get pictures and for me to just watch my step (really dark with ramps and stairs etc).

After the second game the kids came out and we had birthday cake and ice cream, or we offered birthday cake and ice cream, not many kids wanted any of it, they did all down another can of pop though!  Once everyone was done and we had cleaned up we called the kids out of the ball room over to do presents.  K did pretty good lol, he got an MP3 player (since when is that a kid's birthday party gift?), $25 gift card to Toys R Us, $30 cash, a super soaker and beyblade and a paper jamz guitar.  He was a very happy little boy!  As there was still about half an hour left of the party we told then they could go back and play in the ball room.  N's mom arrived to pick him up as they were heading out to their trailer but we had arranged it so that we would be driving all the kids back to our home town (the lazer tag was about 20minutes from our town).  Dad was watching our group in the ball room and another group of boys, slightly older, came in to play as well.  After a while dad left and him and mom were taking things to the car.  That's when things went bad.

J (remember he is the youngest out of them all) came out of the ball room sobbing and clutching his stomach with B (his older brother ) right behind him.  I asked what happened and he tells me that one of the kids in their kicked him in the stomach and that they were being rough.  I went right to the opening of the ball toom and yelled 'My kids out NOW'.  This is the part that shocked me: as my kids were leaving the room all the others were hooting and hollering about the losers and cry babies and on and on.  I got them back to the party room and the others than came to the window (an open spot in the wall with fencing on it to keep the balls in) and started banging on the fencing and calling my boys wimps and how they were losers and it just kept going and then they started saying inappropriate language for a family party center.  The shocking part?... There were FOUR adults sitting at the tables watching their group behave like that an not a one said anything!!  My parents came back in, saw our kids out of the room getting mad, J just crying at this point and T getting rerady to go in and fight the kids (I had to grab him by his shirt at one point because I was concerned he was going to go and get in to it with these kids!).  We very quickly just grabbed the boys, took the goodie bags (we hadn't even gave them out yet!) and walked right out of the place.  While in the parking lot our boys were still all hyped up and ticked off so mom, dad and I were trying to get the story out of all of them.  Finally we gave out the goodie bags and divided them up between the two cars and headed home.

About half way home B mentioned something about how one kid was annoyed becasue J had broken his glasses.  Mom and I just looked at each other and we both knew that if it was one of our kids misbehaving it would be J.  So stories start going around and we find out that J and T weren't too innocent in the whole matter.  But still, if one of our boys had hurt one of the other boys they would have been pulled out and made to apologize to that boy.  Secondly if my kids had of behaved like the others did when I pulled our kids out, they all would have been pulled out of the ball room and made to sit and behave.  We would have stepped in and done something, no way we would have let that go like those other parents did!

Any ways, all the kids got into their goodie bags on the way home and we kept hearing "OMG I love tech decks" and "Which tong-too did you get, want to trade?" and "Aero is my favourite" and "I love fruit roll-ups".  So we seemed to do a really good job on the goodie bags and Kyler had a great time and that is all that mattered at the end of the day.  Not sure I would plan another party there but still the kids had fun so it was a good night.