Party for Ogres

The weather report said sunny in the morning with developing isolated thunder storms by the afternoon, with a chance of severe storms. I kept telling myself that it was NOT going to rain. It was too hot and sunny all morning for a cloud to creep into the sky. I refused, no matter how many times I checked the Yahoo weather forecast, I refused to believe it was going to rain. I organized everything outside. I filled up the water balloons. I hid the scavenger hunt clues. I refused to cancel the inflatable wizard castle. It just was not going to rain. Not during Max’s birthday party. Those developing clouds were going to pass over. That grey blur in the distance was just an illusion. It was not going to rain.

It rained……HARD!

But that’s not all that went awry.

Before the guests even arrived, the Inflatable castle, that I spent way too much money for, flipped over, because the guy didn’t stake it down and a gust of wind caused it to topple. The company was supposed to send someone to fix it, but they were taking too long. A neighbor and my husband were able to get it up and running again….until the lightening started.

My husband was in charge of the grilling. However, he was on-call, and had had so many deliveries this week, including more today. He managed to come home for about an hour to get some of the hot dogs and hamburgers grilled, in the downpour. Except this was the first time he had ever used our brand new gas grill (we’ve always had charcoal), and he underestimated the power of the flame. The hotdogs were perfect, but the burgers were charred. Then he got paged again, and we were left broiling the remaining burgers in the oven.

The rain did seem to let up a bit, so I decided to go ahead and inflate the castle again. However, while some kids were jumping around in it, the thing just cut off, collapsing a few of the kids inside. We managed to get all the kids out safely, but the rain started again, so that was the end of the castle.

So for almost the entire party, we had about 20 ogres wandering around the house, along with their parents. I improvised with some of the games to convert them for indoor. And all my adult friends who came were very helpful in keeping the kids in line when trying to play the games, open gifts, have dinner and cake, clean-up etc.

I’m sure the kids had a lot of fun, but personally, I was very disappointed. I had spent a lot of time and energy planning this party, and I even made a schedule for exactly when everything was supposed to be happening. But because we had to move it all inside, it just seemed hectic and out of control to me.

But Max did participate in some of the games, (even though he kept telling me all week that he didn’t want to do any of them). And even though he kept screaming to everyone that it wasn’t his birthday and Sara had to trap him from running away while everyone sang, Max did blow out the candles on his cake. My friend Angela made some delicious gluten/dairy free Shrek cookies for the people with food allergies. And the Shrek “ears” were a huge hit!

But next year, I think we’ll skip the big “at home” party and find an alternate, indoor location.