Fun seemed to have been had by all at Dillon’s eighth birthday party yesterday. Every year, he thinks of a theme, he’s big on the party theme, it’s been (since he was old enough to choose) punk rock, pirates, and space-slash-robots (his punctuation, there). This year, it was adventure and exploration. Think more Indiana Jones than Dora the Explorer.
And it worked out pretty well, considering I did not start planning it prior to school letting out and so inviting some of his classmates proved a little challenging. One big highlight was that his “best friend in the whole world” Kaiden was there, and the two guys were inseparable for all of the games and activities, despite me reminding Dillon on a couple of occasions that he should pay attention to his other guests a little too.
There were about 14 kids there for the party, and some of their parents stuck around, which was fun, though I wish I was able to hang out more and direct party games slightly less. Kate was the invaluable person, though, and totally came through in a variety of ways, including designing an AWESOME treasure hunt for the kids. The party was split into two teams, and they thought they were racing each other to the treasure, but really there were two treasures in separate gardens in the back yard (yes, she actually buried peanut butter jars full of skittles in my backyard, did I mention it was awesome?). The funniest thing with that was that I sort of had the kids count off (rigging the teams slightly when I realized no individual on team #2 was older than five, and I moved two guys from Dillon’s soccer team into that group), handed out the first clue, and then team two was stymied when the first clue was written in cursive, which none of them could read. It hadn’t occurred to me that all the older, Montessori-educated kids were on one team and so they could all read cursive while the other team needed an interpreter.
They had a great time running around, chasing clues, and skill sets ranging from overlooking some really obvious ones to blowing my mind by getting some harder ones super-quickly. The scavenger hunt was also really fun, though adults had to help some kids who were on teams where neither could read…
I loved one story that I heard from the mom of one of Dillon’s favorite (girl) friend from school. Apparently they went to Target and the girl said, “Dillon LOVES Bionicles, we should get him one.” And her mom asked, “What’s a Bionicle?” And the girl said, “I don’t know, but Dillon loves them.” I find that hilarious. D was so tickled that the girl made it to the party, though. He tells me “all the boys in the class are in love with her”. (That’s a direct quote.) Also, he was highly impressed with her treasure hunting and scavenger hunting prowess. Apparently, “She’s great at everything.” Yikes. He talks like this, and he’s only just turned eight. Though I suppose in a couple of years he’ll probably stop talking to me about it altogether. That’s a sober thought for the evening. Time marches on.