After a long two days of driving, we arrived home today just in time for Charlie's birthday party. We left yesterday morning drove until 9:30pm last night. We checked into a motel, got up this morning at 4:00am, and got on the road by 4:30am in order to make it. We arrived in time to help with the final preparations.
We had heard from other parents that kids begin wanting to have small parties as they reach Charlie's age, so we figured this might be the last year for a really big party. A lot of the potential birthday activities are for small numbers of kids or have a prohibitive "per kid" charge. Alisa checked around and found that we could reserve the Mullin's Center for a very reasonable rate and could bring as many kids as we wanted, so that's what we did. For the first hour, we got the skating rink to ourselves and for the second hour and room to use for the party. We invited his whole class and the Chipettes(and encouraged siblings to come).
We got there just before 1pm and got their skates on. The chipettes, who are used to ice time, were also there putting on skates, but most of the others didn't start arriving until 1pm. They filtered onto the ice, a few at a time, until the rink started looking pretty full. I did a rough count, and it looked like we had between 40 and 50 kids on the ice, plus a half dozen adult -- most parents, but we had also hired the boys' coach Celene to come and help out on the ice. She helped the kids who hadn't skated before and let Daniel hang all over her.
Charlie was surrounded by friends -- playing tag, racing, skating in circles. The Chipettes cornered him finally and dragged him over to make him go through their routine. It was great fun to see Charlie in a gaggle of girls getting pulled this way and that. If I had thought of it, I would have brought the music. They ran through it perfectly (although one poor person got caught between them while they were doing the intersection and got knocked down.
After 50 minutes, we cleared the ice and went into one of the locker rooms for the party. Alisa had put out cupcakes, crackers, peanuts, soda, punch, baloons, and myriad other party items, including several games. She told the kids to help themselves to whatever they wanted and the fun began. We had a few kids to tried to make water baloons, but other than that, the party was excited, but not out of control. Celene stayed and joined in too, which was great. This bunch of kids has always been able to keep under control, even when they're in a large group, and everything worked out fine. Enough of the Chipettes came that they didn't seem to feel awkward and everyone had a great time.
Eventually, Charlie started opening presents. The kids formed a gauntlet around him and he opened present after present. He got a huge mountain of booty. Eventually, the kids began to filter out in ones and twos and the party came to a close. It was great -- one of the best parties I've ever seen. I'm really glad I didn't miss it.
