Jun 25, 2013

Sport's Other Birthday Party

Let me first confess that I don't have any pictures of Sport's birthday party with his friends. I was very fortunate to get out with my life intact...

This all started a couple of weeks ago. Since Sport has this end of June birthday, we have almost always done a water party, and  he has been rather famous for them. It was only last year that we veered off the expected course and did the carnival party, but that was tons of work! And I haven't been feeling all that great, and I just didn't want to take on a huge project.

So we brainstormed a little and I came up with a brilliant beyond brilliant plan. We could reserve the church gym and Sport and his friends could play basketball and dodgeball, open gifts and grab a cupcake on their way out the door. It was the perfect plan! I didn't even have to clean my house!

The party was today and I gathered all my equipment and loaded it in the van. I changed into my referee shirt and pulled the whistle over my head. I knew it was absolutely necessary to take control of this party right from the beginning. When we got to the church we put down the baskets and I swept the gym floor. Then we waited for the boys to arrive.

It didn't take long. Soon there were about 19 fourth graders running around the gym and the dog Walker was my only assistant, unless you count Curly and Baby Doll...

The whistle did amazing things! One minute they would be pounding down the floor, arms and legs flying and one tweet later and they would all be listening intently. We had 9 boys on each team so we subbed in every 2 minutes. That kept everybody in the game.

An hour later we switched to dodgeball. Twenty minutes into the game I blew another whistle and we headed for the lobby to open gifts. Sport didn't even get everything opened before the boys were migrating back to the gym for one last game of dodgeball. By the time it was over I had moms waiting at the door. In 5 minutes we went from complete chaos to relative calm.

Since I sent them all outside with their cupcakes, cleanup was easy. So why did I feel like passing out when it was over?!

1 comment:

Shell said...

Parties always wear me out! This sounds like a fun one!