Top Ten Reasons Kid Birthday Parties Are Not My Favorite Weekend Plans

I am in back-to-back birthday party hell mode this month.  It seems all my friends that are really close to me are having birthday parties for their little ones that are in the same age range as PD1 and PD2.   It is one of those things that you know you need to do to be a good friend and to encourage your kids to enjoy.  Let’s be honest here, if  all you parents sit down and truly assess the whole “other” kid birthday parties, you would have to agree most of you would rather watch paint dry, have hemorrhoid surgery or endure physical therapy (that’s for you, Idiot) than have to sit through a weekend afternoon with the results of other people’s bad parenting mistakes kids.  This is the inspiration to my Top Ten Tuesday!

10.  You get the invitation for a 3-year-old birthday party that says “NO GIFTS” or “Only Educational Toys Please”.  Seriously, it is a kid’s birthday party!  If I have to go to it at least let me go pick out the most cool but  annoyingly loud and obnoxious toy and relish in the fact that it is not at my house.  And really, aren’t all toys educational?  Heck even “adult toys” have some level of educational value to them!

9.  The party starts right smack in the middle of nap time hours.  Oh joy! Nothing excites me more that sleep deprived toddlers hopped up on sugar! 

8.  No booze.  OK, I get it is for the kids, but if it is a party that requires me to have to schlep two kids, by myself, and all the swag that goes along with it, then go sit and watch the organized chaos, or not, for two hours, shouldn’t I be at least rewarded with a glass of wine or cocktail?  Again, it all goes back to booze makes everything better.

7. Gift Bags.  I get that is nice to have a little parting prize for the kiddos but do we have to try to reenact the Oscar’s after-party swag bags?  A sandbox bucket, a thing of bubbles and a sticker is more than enough!  Even though the gesture is nice, the toddler did not need a cruise on Carnival along with the bucket and few sand toys.

6.  Games.  Having small children try to play musical chairs is a lot like trying to herd cats. Again, I have a lot more patience for that, with a cocktail in my hand! 

5. Cake.  Now, I love cake!  I love to make cakes!  At this age cupcakes are the way to go.  Nothing is harder to manage than a piece of cake for two small children.  At least with a cupcake, it is a finger food and can be manhandled and tolerate the mutilation a small child can bring upon the situation.  Clean up is still bad, just not as nearly as bad.

4.  Rain.  NOTHING is worse than being cooped up in a house with ten small children and their parents all hopped up on sugar, not napped and stir crazy.  Again, where is my cocktail?

3. No Bounce House/Jolly Jump.  Pulling up to a party, nothing is more relieving for me to see  than a Bounce House/Jolly Jump.  I actually get some mingle time and the kids will sleep like champs that night!  Oh, bless the creator of the Bounce House/Jolly Jump.

2. No Opening of the Presents.  What?  That is the best part!  Sure it makes the kids a bit antsy and some may feel left out, but IT IS NOT THEIR BIRTHDAY!  This is the first lesson on self-control and being happy on the outside even though you are green with envy on the inside and want to kick that kid’s ass for getting cooler toys than you have.  I love seeing the expression of the kid as he/she opens the gift we took all the time and effort to get, wrap and drag to the party.  I have also noticed it brings a very early stage of  joy to PD2 to see that her little buddy liked what she got them. Maybe I am a freak, but I love giving more than receiving! Get you minds out of the gutters, this a post about kid birthday parties!

1. Other People’s Kids.  Need I say more?

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Halloween Disaster at the Happiest Place on Earth Part 1

It was a dark and stormy afternoon, this past Tuesday, as we headed out to the “Happiest Place on Earth”  for their special Halloween celebration.   When I woke up Tuesday morning it was raining, not just raining, but pouring!  The kind of pouring that Texans call, ” a cow pissin’ on a flat rock” pouring.   I live in Southern California, the only worry we have in October are wildfires, not rain, thunder, lightning and hail. 

With the weather the way it was and the forecast showing it only gettng worse,  I called Disney to see if we could get a rain check since I had purchased these tickets for the family in advance for this particular day.  They nearly laughed me off the phone and pretty much told me that I could buy a poncho from one of the many gift shops and to pretty much suck it up.  So we packed up the kids and headed to the Happiest Place on Earth. 

When we got there, we loaded the kids up in the double stroller and put their rain coats on.  We headed out of the parking structure, which is conveniently located about a mile from the park entrance.  You can take a tram from the parking structure, but that would mean we would have to break down the stroller and all its contents (I tend to over pack when on outings so my stroller usually looks like a yak or sherpa heading to base camp of Everest).   It was only a light drizzle so we decided to “go for it”.   About three minutes into the walk, the heavens open up and we get soaked. It is raining cats and dogs!  I have PD1 holding a unbrella and trying to referee her from stabbing her sister in the eye with the umbrella spokes that is sitting behind her.   While trying to do that, I am not paying attention to where I am going and walk through puddles that could support a school of fish. 

We finally get to the gates, I am soaked, the hubs is soaked, but the kids are fairly comfortable and dry.  As we enter through the security portion of the entrance the Disney staff, must have taken pity on my “drowned rat cat” appearance and did not force the issue.

As we head in there are a million people there!  How could this be? It is pouring! Are there this many people as cheap and dumb as me to insisting on going to Disneyland in the rain?  Everyone is wearing those infamous ponchos that the customer service rep told me about.  I refused to not get one out of principal, which the only person it hurt was me, my rain jacket lost it luster of holding back the rain about an hour into the adventure.

While navigating through the park and you combine strollers, rain, people in ponchos and people texting, you are in the making of a huge disaster of pending foot, leg, hip, arm, back , neck and most of all butt injuries. The butt injuries are the most common because when someone is stupid enough to be pushing a stroller in the rain, while wearing a poncho that they can’t see in, and trying to text or twitter about how much fun they are NOT having at Disneyland, and they run over you, well lets just say the phone finds a new home.

Finally it is time for some rides!  We unload the kids and head to Dumbo!  The line is pleasantly short and we head into the loading section.  As I am stepping into the pink elephant, I am welcomed with an ice cold drench to the feet.  The friggin’ bottom of the ride if full of water!  Oh great! Just great!  Well, that explains why that ride had a short line.  Shortly after my feet get drenched, they rid the water from each bottom.

After Dumbo we take refuge in the Merrry-Go- Round until the rain lets up.   It is now dark and we head to Small World to only find that it is closed.  Drat! However, there is a long line and at Disneyland long lines usually means something fun and exciting.  I ask a random middle-aged guy standing in line with his family what the line was for, he said, “Candy!”  Candy?  I was puzzled.  I know that during this event Disneyland has stations set up for the kids to go and grab a handful of candy from, but this line was something deserving of meeting Mr. Wonka himself.I pressed the guy a bit further to the details of the “candy” and he said, “It is just candy!”  I could not help but laugh out loud and say, “Seriously, you are waiting in an hour long line, in the rain, for plain Hershey bars?”  He said, “Yes, it is all about the experience, plus they give you a lot of candy for the wait!”  I replied back in my soaken, sassy tone, ” Well, if it is a lot of candy you are looking for,  that is what Costco is for!” He was not amused. 

I kept looking back at the line and it just kept getting longer and longer.  The hubs kept saying that we may be missing something so I again asked a staff member and they verified it was just the candy line.  Those people were insane! They had small children, standing in the rain getting soaked for a few measly candy bars!  The hubs and I both agreed that we would rather have hemroid surgery than be that stupid. 

The evening was full of misfits and odd ordeals.  We managed to NOT stay dry, but we kept our humor and mockery of all the idiots we saw.  We must have rode the Merry-Go-Round and Dumbo a million times and we did manage to traumatized PD1 on two of the rides, which I will address in part two of this series. 

The moral of this story is don’t go to Disneyland ever while it is raining, even if you already have paid for your tickets in advance. You will only be surrounded by stupid, wet and insane people. The smart, dry and sane people stayed home and watched Toy Story and ate candy from Costco.

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