Party Affiliation

When our daughter turned 5 this summer, we let her choose three little friends to invite and we put on a "Pirate Party" here at the house; she's fascinated by pirates, for some reason. I'll freely admit that the whole affair was designed by my wife: we had bandannas and eye patches for the kids, a treasure hunt and some other pirate-y games, plus of course the fully-licensed Pirates of the Caribbean cake. I thought it was a pretty slick affair, all the way around, and the kids seemed to have a good time.

Although the spouse was definitely the producer, director and scriptwriter, I didn't get off totally scot-free. In fact, it followed the pattern of a lot of our projects around here:

1. wife hatches Clever Scheme in her head; it percolates for days or even weeks
2. she spends lots of time running around buying and otherwise assembling the necessary elements
3. at the last moment, I suddenly receive a list of tasks (OK, usually scut) that must be carried out in the last X hours before the event happens
4. then and only then do I find out, more or less piecewise, the true scope of The Grand Plan....

Oh well, I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm never going to be the visionary half of this partnership (can you sense it's hard enough for me to come up with a blog idea weekly?). And while it can be a bit stressful to be just part of the staff, in the end we did manage to execute a decent party for a handful of 5-year-olds.

This week one of the guests returned the favor and she got to attend his party... at a local family fun center. Think Chuck E. Cheese except backwards: instead of a pizza place with a game room attached, a recreation facility with a snack bar. The group of kids -- and I didn't get a count, but clearly way more than three! -- were treated to a big climbing/sliding facility with ball cannons, a laser tag arena, an arcade (with tokens supplied by the host), and a party room with pizza and cake. I picked up a flyer: the basic party starts at $179.

I can tell you that we didn't spend $179 on our Pirate Party... but I thought our treasure map drawn with markers on a piece of paper bag was pretty cool.

It seems to me that the ante's been raised these days. When the kids were in preschool, the parents whose kids had a birthday in a given month would provide the monthly birthday party. I'm thinking cupcakes, juice, maybe those little ice cream cups. I was not prepared for the other parents coming up with individual goodie bags for each child. I realize that's not quite along the scale of My Super Sweet Sixteen, but sometimes I get the feeling we as parents go a bit over the top... and why? Are we trying to please the kid, or beat the other parents?

I can be as guilty as the next one in occasionally trying to do something needlessly elaborate to make my kids happy (and often end up re-re-re-learning the "kids would rather play with the box" lesson), but I'm not going to keep up with the Joneses, and I certainly have no interest in trying to keep up with their kids.