Party Time!

My baby girl is turning 11 this week so her Dad and I are throwing her a slumber party this weekend. Our house will be taken over by a bunch of little girls, giggling, whispering, playing games and making a ton of noise. If I were normal I would be dreading the whole evening, but instead I am kicked into full party planning gear and I couldn't be happier. In fact, my little girl is trying to reign me in and has warned me to not go overboard. She wants me to keep it low key, not like all the other parties I throw. Who is this child? I demand a maternity test because this girl can't be mine!

My baby Girl

I LOVE a good party. I really love MY parties. I get the deepest pleasure from opening my home, feeding people a ton of great food, concocting tasty drinks and watching those near and dear to me have a good time. I spend months planning a really big party and each moment is pure bliss for me. Well, maybe not pure bliss, the last 24 hours can get a little hairy and my husband and I are rarely speaking to each other when the first guests arrive. Rest assured though, by the time the last guests leave we are happily sharing a plate full of leftovers, laughing about all the wonderful things that happened the few short hours before and contemplating when the next big shin ding should occur.

I am also the expert at justifying any and all reasons to have a party. Holidays are my specialty, but really, I can celebrate any day that ends with a "y". Recently we were invited to some friend's house for a BBQ and my girlfriend's husband asked who was coming. As she was rattling off the short list her husband asked if I was going to be attending, which I was, and he simply stated "If she is going to be here it isn't just a BBQ, it will be a party".  Although I am not 100% sure his statement was a compliment, I took it as such and no one can tell me differently. After all, it was a day that ended with a "y" so if pressed I am sure I had a reason we should of been having a party.

I am not sure when my love of parties began or when I started throwing multiple parties each year, but I can tell you they were born out of necessity. Once we had kids my husband and I really became home bodies, which is crippling for an extroverted person like myself. They say having kids changes everything and it sure did for me. While we still enjoyed going out, having a good time, relaxing with friends, we were terrified to leave our kids with anyone. We even tried a sleepover with my parents when our daughter was 2 but after multiple unanswered phone calls we left the office party in a panic and rushed to see what awful tragedy had occurred to our precious baby girl. Imagine our shock when we arrive and found everyone asleep with the TV blaring so loud it drowned out the sound of the telephone. No, babysitters of any kind were not for us.

Meanwhile, all our friends also started to have kids of their own and we knew we weren't the only ones with the attachment parent issues. I fully admit it wasn't the kids that had the separation anxiety, it was us! So, instead of finding suitable childcare, paying the astronomical amount for said suitable provider (because if they are good, they won't be cheep) and then adding on the additional cost of the actual date, we began to stay home and invite other families to join us. It was a win win for everyone. In fact, one of the first big get together we had I hired a babysitter to hang out with the kids, do crafts and handle the little stuff so the parents could really relax without the constant interruption little ones supply. It was awesome! Now that our kids are older and more self sufficient it is much easier...trampoline in the back, a couple of games the older ones can control and lots of new outside balls and sidewalk chalk. EVERYONE is happy!

Our Halloween Witch's Brew

We have gotten so good at it that we are actually know for our annual Halloween party. Halloween is our big blow out of the year and absolutely everything is over the top. Kid game, goodie bags, enough food to feed a small country, drinks, fire pit, chocolate fountain and just about everyone comes dressed in costume. Halloween is my favorite holiday because I get to throw a party of gigantic proportions and my husband just sits back and watches me make the magic happen. He lets me roll with it because he knows it will be great and he knows it makes he happy to my core. I guess he gets the same thing out of it as I do, he likes to see me happy and it makes me happy to see everyone else happy. By the end of the evening our living room is usually a dance floor, kids and moms dancing, people sweating, laughing and carrying on. Occasionally a husband will take a disturbing home video of a mom getting her grove on and just like that our house party goes viral! Disneyland has nothing on our house, at Halloween we are the happiest place on earth!

All this talk of a party makes we want to throw one...hmmmm...summertime is almost here and my best friend is coming to visit. Sounds like a reason to party to me!

Graduation...Elementary School Style?

Last night we returned home from swim practice a little later than normal because of a pleasant pit stop to see some friends we haven't seen in a while. The visit was completely wonderful, but the ensuing chaos from the late evening was almost impossible to overcome. Although, almost quickly turned into utterly impossible when I checked the phone messages at 10pm last night. "Hello 5th Grade Parents. Just a reminder that 5th grade picture day is tomorrow." REMINDER??? I never got the first memo!! You have got to be kidding me!

Quickly I sprang into Uber Mom mode and addressed what I knew would be the most pressing issue..."honey, what do you want to wear?" I knew her choice would not be something that would be clean, easy to find or possibly even under the same roof we were currently standing under. As much as I love my girl child, she does have a knack for making some things impossibly difficult. Luckily for me she knew exactly what shirt, knew where it was but it did need a trip into the washer...STAT!

With the wardrobe issue solved, the outfit in the washer and time ticking by at a rapid pace I sent everyone off to bed. In my head I figured we could tackle any other issues in the morning but right now we were 1 1/2 hours past our normal bed time. What I didn't figure was that 1 1/2 hours was going to be made up somewhere and it happened to be the next morning. We all woke up late which didn't help the homework that didn't get done, the load of wet picture clothes in the washer or the fact that showers were skipped the night before. I quickly found myself not tackling any issues, but having the crap beat out of me by Father Time and Murphy and his frigging law! What could go wrong was going wrong and fast!

We did manage to make it to school, in the rain, and about 5 minutes late. She had the outfit she wanted, but we didn't have time to curl her hair. It was clean and blown straight and I thought very pretty, but I could tell she was a little disappointed. I hate when they get disappointed for the simple things and they manage to blow off the big issues, but I guess that is a luxury of youth. What I wasn't prepared for was her anger and frustration when school was over. "Mom, do you know what the pictures were? Do You?" Well, no I didn't. I really don't know what 5th Grade pictures consist of. "They made me put on an ugly GOLD gown. They couldn't even see my Stanford shirt!" Like the good mom that I am, I quickly jumped on her band wagon because I had just spent the last 12 hours trying to wash an outfit that no one even saw. Yes, I was pissed too!

What didn't help matters much was that I had spent the whole day working on 5th grade graduation projects. In the last couple of years I have really stepped back from volunteering, but I thought it would be nice to help with the last elementary event my daughter would have. What I didn't realize was that I was getting involved with a week long celebration of gigantic proportions. This is ELEMENTARY SCHOOL GRADUATION PEOPLE! There is a Pool Day, Field Day, Softball Game and Yearbook Day, Movie Day and an actual Ceremony Day. I don't even remember doing this much for my high school graduation, although that whole time frame is a little blurry for a multitude of reasons. Is she going to expect the same amount of hoopla for middle school?  God forbid what she is going to expect for high school. Screw a college fund, I better start socking away to make it through the graduation.

The man power that is needed to pull off these extraordinary events is just as over the top as the actual events. There are committees for each day, and some days have multiple committees. My rough estimate is that for our graduating class of about 140 students there are at least 75 parent volunteers feverishly working behind the scenes in hopes of making their young children's graduation experience memorable. With the amount of time, effort and money that is going into graduation, this better be the BEST WEEK EVER! Although, you have to remember who the audience is...a group of budding pubescent pre-teens in the throws of hormonal angst that would rather be caught dead than thinking anything their parents were involved in creating is even sort of cool. I fully expect that at the end of the week we will be lucky to get a collective "Yeah, it was alright".

For my daughter, graduation events better start picking up real soon. She is already a little disenchanted with the entire graduation scene based on the gold gown experience. For an almost 11 year old she is quite astute in her conclusion that her input or opinion regarding the entire experience doesn't really factor in. She is determined to proudly wear her Stanford shirt (that we went to the actual campus to get for her) at her graduation since she had to wear that stupid gold gown for her picture. Being the supportive mom I am, I smile and shake my head in agreement all the time trying to figure out when to drop the bomb that they will all be wearing the same shirt for graduation...so sayeth the 5th Grade Graduation powers that be.

I got a feeling we might not make it through her first graduation experience unscathed.