Report on the Birthday Bashment

Preparations

Invitations drawn, copied, distributed. Reservations made at the Bellevue Skate King, deposit check sent. Requested movies moved to top of Netflix queue. Trip to fabric store to purchase vast quantities of tulle. Trip to grocery store to purchase vast quantities of root beer, grape soda, Doritos, Cheetos, Oreos, gummy worms, Swedish fish, Reese's peanut butter cups, mini Twix, and ingredients for birthday cake. Fabrication of fifteen tutus. Creation of Black Magic chocolate cake with mocha butter cream icing and chocolate leaves. Fielding of last-minute phone calls: What time should my dad drop me off? Do I need a sleeping bag? Is it okay for me to stay until 3 tomorrow? And our favorite, a text-to-landline message intoned for us by a robotic female voice: Yo-do-you-have-black-mini-shorts-I-can-borrow-my-mom-changed-my-outfit-and-now-I'm-wearing-a-very-short-black-and-purple-dress. We had no idea who this was from. Nor did we have any black mini shorts to spare.

Note: Except for those tasks involving money and/or electric mixers, the birthday girl pretty much completed or coordinated the preparations herself. (Special thanks to Tiffy for assistance with tutus!)

Phase I: Skating

We never really sat down and counted up how many people were coming to this party. And somehow even when they were all gathered at our house, we found it impossible to figure out if they would all fit in the three cars that were heading out to the Bellevue Skate King. Eventually we just made everyone get into a vehicle to see what would happen -- and luckily with Tiffy's van (driven by Lauren), Anderw's Prius, and the Streets' Volvo (driven by Mikala), we had exactly enough seats for the 16 children. Mikala and Simon rode with five Orca girls who chattered and giggled and texted each other nonstop -- the things we learned during that 20 minute ride would curl your hair!

A few pix from the Bellevue Skate King (you can spot the members of our party because almost all of them are wearing tutus):





Poor Lauren couldn't skate on account of she broke her arm last Saturday. How'd that happen, you ask? Well, she was rollerskating, you see. Right here at the Bellevue Skate King. Ouch. Andrew and some of the girls kept her company while the rest of us skated ourselves into a blissful trance.


Phase II: Sleepover

We'll admit to a moment of panic when we got back to the house and staggered inside with our skates, and everybody crammed into the livingroom and started squealing like mad as Josie opened her presents, and we looked at the clock and thought: Good Lord, this party isn't even a third over yet... But then Flora and Sophie started playing "Love Song" on the piano and everyone gathered around and sang along, and we smiled and thought: No, it's going to be okay.

Last year's birthday sleepover was something of a disaster: too many girls in a too-small room too close to our own, and a deep discrepancy between our expectations and theirs in regards to the amount of sleeping -- and shrieking -- that would be done. By the time the last child had departed our house in the morning, we had vowed never to host another sleepover again as long as we lived.

And yet. When a girl turns twelve, what else are you gonna do? This year we made some adjustments to the spatial arrangements, our expectations, and our communication thereof. In particular, we made the following announcement before distributing the popcorn:

"Ladies and gentleman. We are about to start movie number one, The Simpsons. After movie number one, there will be an opportunity for people who are tired to go to sleep. I know, I know: ha ha ha. But there will be that opportunity. We will then screen movie number two, Stardust. After that there will be a more concerted effort on the part of the grownups to get you to go to sleep. There are two double beds upstairs, and plenty of room downstairs for everyone's sleeping bags. You do not have to go to sleep. But you do have to be quiet. I may seem like a pretty relaxed mom who doesn't mind a fair amount of chaos, but I can tell you right now that after a certain point this is no longer the case, and that I will go completely ape-shit if you keep me awake all night."

Veterans from last year nodded brightly at this. "Oh yeah, we remember that!"

Things went relatively smoothly after that. Five children peeled off at midnight and went to sleep before the second movie started. When movie #2 was over, the rest of the crew trooped downstairs. We followed to make sure there were enough blankets and pillows, then went back up to bed.

When Andrew woke up at six, five die-hards were still up downstairs, thrilled -- in a bleary, swaying-on-their-feet sort of way -- to have pulled their first all-nighter. (We loved reading their gleeful wee-hour Facebook status updates later.) Their achievement having been witnessed by a grown-up, they all immediately lay down on the floor and passed out. We took the coffee grinder out onto the terrace so it wouldn't wake them up -- as if anything could have.

Andrew cleaned up the knee-deep layer of popcorn and candy wrappers in the TV room. Shortly after that the early-to-bed contingent woke up and put on Some Like It Hot. By the time that was over most of the downstairs sleepers were stirring, and Andrew had gotten started on the first of four triple batches of pancakes. One by one the parents came, and the crowd slowly dwindled, taking their sleeping bags and tutus with them. By noon we could safely say it was over, and we had survived!