We survived Alice’s party. It was quite the crew — most of the invitees showed up and Mom, not wanting to let any social effort go unpunished, ran in to one of Charles’ soccer team friends whose little brother played with Alice during practice and invited both of them. In all, there were 11 guests for Alice which was a bit over whelming for her (Mom came down to me in the basement at one point and described Alice as “freaking out” she was so wound up).
We had a few organized activities. There was a game of musical chairs, which didn’t go one long but seemed to be a lot of fun for the participants, both those who knew what was going on and those who had no clue. There was a round of tiara decorating, which oddly did not get a lot of participation from the boys. Mom had planned on an organized opening of the presents but Alice tore in to them in a frenzy once the announcement of imminence was made and Mom surrendered to the moment. And lastly, we had a piñata in the form of Dora which the kid whacked at with much enthusiasm. Mostly, though, the kids just played.
Alice played with most of her guests at one point or another. We managed to get her fellow Alice classmate to attend, which I thought was fun. You could tell which other guests were classmates because they all called our Alice “Alice C.” and the other Alice “Alice G.”. Maggie was there as well.
The basement was totalled, after Charles and I spent the morning getting it in shape. Several of the children had to be almost literally dragged out at the end, which generally indicates a good time was had. Three of the parent stayed for the party, which was an enormous help. I suspect we would have been locking kids in closets otherwise.
Alice got some good presents. One was a princess doll, sort of a rag doll style, which caused a crisis when it was time for bed and it couldn’t be found. Eventually Alice found it and sleep was enabled. She also got this rose petal fairy castle thing, which was apparently an enormous hit with all of the girls. I didn’t see any of it because I was waiting patiently in the basement, watching the hard boys, when Alice stormed the present pile.
Charles had fun. A couple of the kids were a year or two older than Alice and boys and so willing to play with Charles. I knew Charles was in good when one of the kids announced that they should get toy guns and form a patrol to secure the house. Eventually this necessitate building a fort in the basement. They were going to shoot over the walls, but I built a small gun port in the wall for them. They thought this was way cool although it took them a bit to figure out how to duplicate it. After a while, “night” fell and the basement got dark. I had to fetch flashlights for everyone. At one point I made a loud, low moaning noise. Charles and one of the other boys immediately started shooting at me, until the other kid turned on the light, looked over to where I was, and announced “Charles, it was just your Dad!”.
Poly also had a good time, snarfing down most of a plate of cheese and summer sausage slices, which she eventually left for Mom near the front door in a somewhat more digested form. Corwin and Keith hid in Corwin’s room with their Nintendo DSs.
Most of the kids at the party — a couple are missing
Clockwise from the red chair: Sean, AliceG, Isaac, Ryan, Alice, Alison, Lucas, Charles, Helen, Maggie, Lucia
Missing: Andrew, Brandon