NYR 12-4-11- Mac's 9th Birthday Party

Because of scheduling conflicts and the Thanksgiving holiday, we finally hosted Mac's 9th birthday party today.

And boy, was it an ordeal.

Mac wanted a sleepover (Plan A), but because of all these scheduling conflicts, it would have been impossible to have the sleepover until the Christmas holidays, which seemed a long time away for a November 20th birthday.

So then he thought a movie date (Plan B) would be fun. The problem is that most children's movies here are not English-language, but rather are dubbed in Spanish. We knew that "Arthur Christmas" was coming out on December 2 and we only needed to find out whether it was in English because that's the movie Mac really wanted to see. I called the theater a week ahead of time but they said they wouldn't know if it would play in English until Thursday, December 1. No need for advance planning, ladies and gentlemen.

When I called the theater on Thursday, they said the moving wasn't playing in English but we could certainly come to see "Operacion Regalo" dubbed in Spanish. We didn't want to see "Operacion Regalo". We wanted "Arthur Christmas", lady.

On to Plan C. Mac decided that riding go-carts at an amusement park near his school would be fun. So I called the amusement park on Friday, and the lady assured me they were open on Sunday from 9am-3pm. So we arranged for the 4 other boys to be here by 12:30 after church so we could take off for the park.

On Sunday morning, I decided to check the park's website for more information and there was a big notice that said the park was closed on Sunday for private parties.

Really?

Moving on to Plan D, we decided to order in KFC for lunch and have an old-fashioned playdate birthday party. Long gone are the days of my micro-planning every game, craft project, cake, etc decorated according to the party theme.

And for that, I am truly thankful.

(For the record, the cake had "Cars"-themed sprinkles to go with Plan C's go-"car"t theme. Too bad that didn't make a whole lot of sense with the in-house playdate party....)