Joshua’s 7th birthday party – Part 1

Well, this is a first for us. Joshua’s birthday party has been postponed.

This morning we were up early to get ready for the party in the afternoon. It is/was a Transformed-themed birthday party – Generation 1, none of that Michael Bay crap. Much like last year, my wife ordered Transformer-themed t-shirts for the family. For Josh’s little friends as part of the party favor, she ordered plain blue t-shirts and designed iron-on transfers with similar Transformer graphics. We tried ironing them Friday night, but we unfortunately discovered that iron-ons printed with a color laser printer won’t work.

My wife found out that our local Walmart had the ink jet printers and replacement light and dark iron-on transfer sheets. Two options: either find replacement party favor activity books or buy an inkjet printer and new iron-ons and make all 18 shirts between now and 1pm. After I hunted around and found nothing good in terms of activity books, I bought a decent looking HP Deskjet 3052A ink jet printer and lots of iron-on transfer sheets. I’m not a fan of inkjets, but it was 7am and I was desperate. At only $69, I see this as a low-risk purchase.

After I got home, I had to run a work-related errand for my wife up in Hackensack NJ dropping off some materials for a class. When I got back around 10am, the new iron-ons were ready, and I took over from my wife ironing the remaining t-shirts. She finished decorating the birthday cake, we got the kids ready and in the car, loaded the car, and we were ready to party!

Almost.

Josh & Kaiya reading The Lorax before watching The Lorax

12:05pm, ready to go, I had a voicemail from Kids Towne USA, our party venue. There was incident with one of the attractions, smoke, and the place was closed for the day until the local fire department could evaluate. Party cancelled. We were absolutely incredulous.

Consulting amongst ourselves, we decided it would be best to email everyone on the Evite, go there anyway to meet any guests, let them know what’s going on. Some guests didn’t get the email msg, so we apologized for the inconvenience. My brother-in-law Rob and niece Abby were already there. We rescheduled for next Saturday afternoon.

Josh was a little down, but he’s easy-going and took it in stride. With my BIL and niece, we hit the nearby Chick-fil-A for lunch, then hung out at home before Josh’s last soccer game of the winter season.

My lady friend and I chilling at TGI Friday's before we see The Lorax

In the evening, we made plans with some family friends (and their kids are best friends with our kids) to have dinner at the local T.G.I. Friday’s, then walk across the lot to see Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. There was an interminably long wait to get a table for seven people, and we were in danger of missing the film. We eventually were seated, and I immediately got anxious that we were going to get terrible seats, miss the beginning of the film, etc. Then, I had an epiphany. Why was I getting worked up about missing the beginning of a childrens’ movie? The only people who cared about seeing the film were between 3-7-years old, and they didn’t particularly care either. I relaxed, and we walked over whenever we were done. I think we may have missed the first 10-15 minutes. Turns out it wasn’t as terrible as I thought it would be.