Happy Hockey Birthday

We got to celebrate A's birthday this past weekend, and it worked out nicely, even though we sort of lagged on proper planning. Some of this stemmed from a reluctance to make such a huge issue out of it all, while another factor was a constantly changing wish list/agenda. A few months back, she wanted to have a big party, which I for one was sort of dreading. I'm not a party person (I just play one on TV), and all the organizing, not to mention entertaining and oversight, gives me a lot of anxiety. However, if that was her wish, we were prepared to take the plunge.

Another plan that came up was having a big sleepover complete with laser tag/bowling. Again, it involved planning a party, which we were prepared to do. However, as the big day approached, it became clear that the weekend was going to be complicated by none other than... you guessed, hockey. The fortunate aspect of this is that both kids are currently bonkers over hockey, so it wasn't a big problem, but now we had to come up with a different plan.

Saturday was going to be tough because A her final hockey practice, where all the parents were going to take part, and right after that, she had play rehearsal for the school play, which would end late in the afternoon. A sleepover on Saturday was complicated by N's tournament early in the AM on Sunday, plus her best friend was away that weekend. We finally decided to have her birthday sleepover on Monday, leaving the weekend open for hockey and other fun stuff.

We did, however, want to have some sort of little bash over the weekend, especially on her big day. I initially spoke to coach GG about it, and he was somewhat non-committal about it, so we were left trying to formulate a plan. We did get a thumbs up to bring cupcakes to the rehearsal on the condition that they eat them after rehearsal was over, so we had that going.

Anyway, it turns out that GG's wife, JG, was planning on bringing cupcakes for A, which I thought was amazingly nice and thoughtful, but they're amazingly nice and thoughtful people. After the practice, they had pizza and cupcakes, so it was a nice celebration, even though, much to N's chagrin, we had to jet out of there and get her to play rehearsal. At the end of rehearsal, we brought cupcakes only to be scolded for making a mess in the lobby of the school. Our bad, they clean up on Friday and any mess over the weekend gets the drama department in trouble. I ended up breaking out the vacuum and cleaning the floor, how funny is that?

After rehearsal, we were planning on supper and a movie, and it worked out nicely because her buddy CB came along. Again, we didn't make a big issue out of it being her birthday, we just wanted to go out and have fun. We went to the Nugget and had supper at Boloco, and it was definitely a day filled with nothing but junk food, for which I'm sure I'll regret.

Most importantly, A had a blast and it really turned out to be a special day without all the contrived and outrageous festivities. I hate to be a Scrooge, but sometimes I think it's a bit misguided to place so much emphasis and energy on one day of the year, when there are 364 other days when you can really make a difference.

Enough pontification, I'm just grateful that we survived and that the kids have fun. Much thanks to GG and JG for being such good friends. Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Linzi's Cakes for the pic.