Quote:
Originally posted by Gattigap
If I have to attend one more birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, I may lose it.
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I've only been once, and I didn't think it was that horrible - but I was all full of that "I never see my kid running around" latent guilt, so the image of him racing around on a sugar rush was sentimentalized. And, the pizza wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting, just hilariously overpriced. However, Trepidation Dad considered it a lower circle of hell, so we won't be going back.
Anyway, it always seemed a lot less trouble to me to have kiddie parties at home. You control the munchies, alcohol, quality of the other guests ... why would anyone go to the trouble of arranging something out? Supervising someone else just makes more work. (Or maybe I'm just frustrated with the jr. associates today.)
Which brings me to my question: I am on the cusp of planning Birthday No. 2 for the Trepidation Tyke. Having just received the wonderful and amazing Oriental Trading Company catalog, I am tempted to do a "Tiki-Hut" themed party. Not for the kids' benefit, but for the parents, because we have a great blender and lots of rum (and blenderized fruit drinks should be pretty unobjectionable for the kids, too, whatever the parents' wacky diet ideas). But, the OTC had fun palm tree decorations the kids could yank on and pull down, and inflatable Tiki-horseshoe games, and foam fish sunglasses, and hula skirts, and other miscellaneous beach/tiki type crap that could keep a decent age range well occupied for a few hours without breaking much while the parents get blotto.
Question: I assume that every other parent in the north east also gets the OTC catalog regularly. Will anyone think it is cheesey that I'm getting party ideas from a catalog featuring rubber balls at $3.95/gross? Please note that one of Trepidation Kid's friends' mothers is a professional chef/caterer and editor at Martha Stewart Living. (Then again, she might find "Gummy-Tiki-Heads" a relief, come to think of it.)
Question 2: Can anybody think of a good excuse for me to make jello in my brain-shaped jello mold again? I got the mold for Halloween and it is GREAT. But apple-head/shrunken-head activities might be a bit too disturbing for the wee-ones (or, much worse in my neighborhood, un-PC), and a "but first they PULLED OUT THE BRAIN AND HERE IT IS FOR DESSERT" segue was the only way I could think to bring brain-jello into it.
Question 3: We have no back yard, nor access to anything resembling one. Which makes a Tiki-party sort of strange, but nevermind. However, we do have a fire escape which could be called a "back deck" with a straight face (at least in NYC - there is a real door to it, even). Is it even worth trying to figure out if there is any way to make said fire escape child-safe for the party? I figure anything we do would be illegal, and welding child gates over the stair openings seems like way too much trouble (though I am considering it so I can sit out there in the summer anyhow).
Thanks,
Trep. Ma
