Jumping Through Hoops For a Fun Sleepover Weekend, part 1

A couple of weeks back was A’s birthday and she wanted to have her friends over for a sleepover party and all that good stuff, but being the non-party type of people that we are, it was a bit of a dilemma. I have to confess, I’m not too keen on having a party at our house, and that’s just my own shortcoming. In the end, we’d do it if she really wanted, and have done it in the past, but if possible, we would look for alternatives.

She must sense this, or she’s of a similar mindset, but she said she just wanted to have her two best friends over and do something fun. One of her buddies couldn’t make it, for a various reasons, but sometimes I get a sense her parents are not unlike us on the social front. I could be justifying my own social neurosis, it’s just a hunch.

Her other buddy, HC, could make it, and what made it cool was that she has a brother, OC, who is N’s buddy. The girls play on the same team, and the boys play on the same team. When the invitations were extended, it wasn’t clear at first if OC could come, but it worked out perfectly. Once it was clear that the weekend was going to happen, though, it meant that we had to come up with a plan, or should I say, I had to come up with a plan.

Fortunately, there were things going on that weekend, and it really helped. Both A and N are doing spring hockey, and since H and O were essentially done, they were eager to get on the ice one last time before summer. I broached this subject with their parents, and with her dad being the uber-hockey player that he is (he played college hockey, so he’s the real deal), they were all for it. The dad, IC, even wanted to come and watch his kids play. The second hurdle was to see if it was okay with the guys running the show.

I contacted the arena and talked to the man in charge, DD, who for the record is a way cool dude, and inquired if our kid’s friends could play one game even though they weren’t enrolled. He said fine, go for it. Plus, they were potential future participants. I then had to ask A’s coach, because they would both need to play at the PW level. Now as I’ve mentioned, A’s team has issues with attendance. There are days when three kids show up, and they can’t really play a game. I figured since this is an ongoing issue, more kids would make it a game.

He said they’d have to wait and see, being the discrete person that he was, because he didn’t want to deny the kids who actually paid. Fair enough, but as it turns out, once again their team didn’t show up, so both HC and OC could come.

Another complication is that they don’t live that close. Not interminably far, but a bit of a jaunt. This made transfer of children complicated. I was prepared to go and pick them up and then drop them off, no problem, but then their parents wanted to come and watch them play. This made our lives immeasurably easier, because they were bringing the kids to where we were going to be.

This brought up the final hurdle that we needed to deal with, and that was transporting four kids and one adult, as well as four hockey bags. I can barely transport two kids and their hockey bags, let alone four. I could have tied some of the bags to the roof rack, but then R and I came up with a plan. I would take A&R to the rink, and R would do some stuff at work. She would meet us after all the skating was done, and then take all the hockey bags home with her. For the record, because KG and IC are so thoughtful, they had already considered this possibility and were prepared to take the hockey bags home with them after their game, but then realized the kids would need them the next day if they were going to play again.

After the game, I would then take all the kids, sans hockey bags, with me to dinner and a movie. We would then come home, the later the better, and do the sleepover. The next day, there would be more hockey games where the kids could play (we managed to squeak in one more game), and then we would take H&O back home. Again, I was prepared to make the long drive up the hill, but KG insisted on meeting at UA, so that made my life a little easier.

As you can see, life can sure get complicated over here in our neck of the woods. Then again, we have no second thoughts because it worked out beautifully and the kids had so much fun. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Boy, all this talk about preparation, and I haven’t even talked about how the weekend went. That’s a story for another day.

Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks to Palma Co Test for the pic.