"This was my best party ever"

Aidan turned nine years old yesterday. Did you hear that? NINE YEARS OLD. How did that happen? When did this...

July 24, 2005

Turn into this...

Every one of Aidan's birthdays makes me reflect on the journey we've taken together. Aidan learning how to walk and talk. Me learning how to be a mom. Moving from Costa Mesa to Huntington Beach to LA to Utah. Meeting Robert and becoming a family. Amazement at his growing independence; gratitude for his good health and sharp mind.

In lockstep with that yearly reflection comes another tradition... Aidan's birthday party.

I love parties, but for some reason Aidan's birthday parties have always caused me so much stress. Mainly because he cares about them so much, and I want to make them special for him. When he was little, the thought of hosting a lot of people was daunting to me. I often left the party planning to my mom (bless you, Mom) for whom kid's birthday parties is old hat. I think we did three of Aidan's parties -- including the all-important 1st -- at my parent's house and one at my sister's house.  One I outsourced to Chuck E Cheese, one to Sea World, one to Lego Land.

Last year, we moved to Utah in June, one month before Aidan turned eight. Before the move he started asking me, "Will anyone come to my birthday party? I won't know anyone in Utah." Literally the only trepidation he showed over the move was whether or not anyone would come to his birthday party.

Truthfully, last year I had no idea who to invite. I didn't know anyone in Utah with children. Aidan wouldn't start school until August so he wouldn't have any school friends by his party. To make matters worse, Aidan's birthday lands on a highly anticipated state holiday in Utah -- Pioneer Day -- so I knew many people would be out of town or have longstanding plans, even if we did manage to make some friends.

So we turned to Plan B. My mom, dad, sister, and four of Aidan's cousins planned their first trip to Utah around Aidan's birthday so that at least a few of his favorite people would be at his party. We also made a few friends in Utah before the party -- Mimi, Jude, Silas, Maren, Julian, and Presley -- and a few of Robert's old friends also had kids who could make it. Aidan was happy with his party and decided that Utah was a pretty cool place to live. I breathed a sign of relief.

Aidan opening presents last year flanked by Bob and Tripp

Skylander party games

What a difference a year makes. For his ninth birthday party last Saturday, Aidan had a year of Utah under his belt, has made lots of friends, and we were smart enough to avoid Pioneer Day in our planning. Aidan settled on a Lego Movie theme and invited all our neighbors and friends with kids to our house to celebrate.

The highlight of this year's party was a 14 foot water slide in our backyard. If you are thinking about throwing a party, I highly recommend this service. The inflatable company sets everything up in the morning and picks everything up in the afternoon. No muss, no fuss. Even the dads were stoked when they walked into the party. Once again, it made my heart soar to have a house and a backyard where we could throw this kind of party. Have I told you that I love Utah?

Courtesy of Ultimate Inflatables

Benefit of being next door neighbors? Pre-party and post-party access. 

Futile crowd control

Aidan and Robert tandem

Not sure this was allowed in the contract

Since almost 100% of the party budget went to the water slide, I tried to get a little crafty with decorations. I created a photo booth in the backyard with some lego movie props (downloaded from the Internet) where the kids could act goofy and take pictures. The flaw in this plan was that I didn't assign a picture taker to the photo booth so it only really worked as I imagined the couple times when I was running by the photo booth. Even so, the few pictures I got turned out great.

Princess Unikitty

Good cop

Maybe next year I'll do this again and hire a teenager $20 to man the booth.

It was tough to tear the kids away from the water slide, but Grandma JoAnn managed to do so by teaching the kids how to make their own ice cream to go with the cake. Mercifully, she took complete control over this project including buying supplies, prepping the bags, and running it herself. This was a nice reprieve for me so I could grab a bite to eat and get the cake ready.

The way making ice cream works is that you give a bag of sugar, rock salt, vanilla, half and half, and who knows what else to every two kids. Those two kids throw the bag back and forth for 10 minutes until the ingredients turn into ice cream. And it really works! The kids didn't go the full 10 minutes, which means the ice cream was not fully set, but it was still delicious! And if you stuck a straw straight into the bag... milkshake.

Organized chaos

Everyone wanted the piece with Emmet, Batman, or Lord Business 

In year's past, I always worried about enough kids coming to Aidan's birthday party. We've never been part of a community like this where kids just seem to materialize out of thin air. Last Saturday, with very little effort, we had fifty people at our house to celebrate Aidan's birthday. FIFTY. It still boggles my mind.

The coolest thing of all was when Aidan turned to me after the last guest left and said, "This was my best party ever." I can stress about his next party in eleven months, but for now, I think we can officially put this one down in the record books as an unmitigated success.