Party On

Owen's birthday extravaganza almost didn't happen this year. To be honest, its a struggle every year to make the magic happen as invariably: we get back from Iowa mid-August, Owen has his birthday the following week, we have Owen's birthday party that weekend, school starts two to three days later. We then have a joint birthday party for the kids with family, Nora has her birthday, Labor Day is in there somewhere, we have Nora's birthday party, and then we're well into September when baseball, orchestra, dance, soccer, swimming and all other activities take over. As you can see, we have very little wiggle room in our calendar and have not let little things like tornados (Nora's 3rd birthday) or a thunderstorms (Owen's 8th) interfere with our meticulously planned fun agenda.

But the week of Owen's birthday, he came home from camp with a fever and migraine, and ended up going to the ER for another croup episode early the next morning. We kept him home Tuesday and Wednesday, flirted with the idea of sending him to camp on Thursday (his birthday), but by then a bad cough had emerged (making us fear another pneumonia victim though Children's swore on Tuesday that it wasn't that) and another headache and late day fever (as well as loss of appetite) sealed the deal.

But what to do about his birthday? We had 10 or so kids scheduled to spend 3+ hours at out house and no viable weekends to re-schedule until mid-September or later, and by then we'd be in full activities mode. Also, aside from the cough, Owen was healthy most of the day -- he just tended to get a fever and headache late in the afternoon. I didn't want to cancel because Owen had already missed all the fun of camp but I didn't want to get anyone else sick or have Owen pass-out mid-way through.

I conducted a Facebook poll asking how late one could cancel a party and the overwhelming consensus was to cancel it now. And while they were all very convincing, we ultimately decided to screw it, gave Owen some advil a half hour before his guests showed up and hoped for the best.

It went pretty well. The kids all had fun playing baseball and going to the arcade. I think Owen was feeling spent on the walk home and would have been happy to skip the pizza and ice cream in favor of a nap, but he really enjoyed hanging out with his friends before school started and he loved the presents they gave him.

Plus I got to cross one more thing off my to-do list.



To see all the party pics (including some from the drone) click here.