I had Mason's 11th Birthday Party at the end of June, June 21st to be exact. Last year he was in disbelief when I told him that once he turned 10, the big parties stopped. It's actually funny, because last years birthday party was hands down, the easiest party I've done. [It was a sleep over/movie/video game party.]
This year, he was determined, that he wanted a small party. Just like last year, he said.
Well, I'll be honest. He won me over. [That and one of the other Mum's at school insisted we should do parties
at least, while they're in elementary school...] So I relented.
The thing is... I sound kind of tough, and I certainly can be... But I got the idea of having a Minecraft party, and I was pretty darn excited to follow through with it. It started with the invitations:
Awesome right? Especially for a kid who is Minecraft crazy. So I was pretty pleased with myself. I had seen a number of invitation ideas on the internet, and just created this one after a few of the ideas I'd seen.
They got sent out in within the first couple of weeks of June. There was Mason, and 3 other kids. So 4 kids could easily play...
We woke up on June 21st, and found out all the city schools were closed... Our city, was under a state of emergency. I have to admit, that at this point, this was a bit of a shock to me. I had watched the news the night before. I watched as berms were being built in SW Calgary throughout Elbow Park and Rideau Park. It was raining like the dickens on Friday. It poured All. Day. Long. I had planned to pick up a few things for the party, while the kids were at school. Since school was cancelled, they had to come with me. This is the moment, that I actually started to be come concerned:
We stopped to pick up icing sugar and chips... For a boys birthday party... I needed to ice a brownie, and of course, boys need chips... I wanted mini water bottles to wrap a minecraft banner around. We walked into the store, and were met with this scene... The line up snaked all the way down the aisles towards the back of the store. Did I mention I needed icing sugar and chips? And water? Forget it. We left.
We ventured to another grocery store that wasn't busy. I picked up what I needed, and headed to the water aisle. And all the water was gone. Gone. And there was a line up 30 people deep to purchase the fresh spring water. It was
RIGHT THEN, that I might have begun to panic slightly... I went home, got a tip from another friend that the city's water supplied was being turned off, and I was then kind of vibrating a little bit. I then called and texted ALL MY FRIENDS,
sorry about that guys, I did get onboard the crazy train for a very short period of time. I may have sounded a bit like a mad woman shouting, "Fill your tub!!" "Get jugs of water!" And when Barry came home, and he came home, with cases of water,
thank you Barry, you talked me off the ledge, I opened a bottle of wine, and de-stressed ever so slightly. The kids showed up for a sleepover, Miss Madelyn went to Ama's house, and I acted like
I wasn't nervous at all in front of four 10 and 11 year old boys. The water was NOT turned off, and life carried on. We had a birthday party.
It was very simple to decorate. I blew up some green balloons, and drew 'creeper' faces on them. I also had left over glasses/napkins from Madelyn's Mad Science Party, so I drew creeper faces on the glasses as well.
Chips, pizza, vegetables. Overall, it was pretty healthy. I found and downloaded a free minecraft font to label all the food.
Downstairs, they had a treat 'station'. They were so into their gaming, that this was not very well utilized. I was glad, I didn't want any sick bellies.
See... I got my water bottles, this is why I wanted them, not because I was scared we'd never be able to drink water from a tap again.
Mason's Birthday Brownie. That was his request. He's not a super lover of sweets, but he loves his brownies.
And this was the look on his face when he blew all but one candle out, and the boys he goes to school with said,
'we know who that's for....' And then he got red and blushed when a certain girls name got mentioned. Oy...
So, that's how it turned out. We had a party. It was great. Mason told me it was the most awesome party ever. Such a lovely ring to those words, when you're the one planning the party.
As far as the flooding went. It was devastating. Calgary was hit hard. Southern Alberta was hit hard. Seeing the images on the television was surreal. I've never been so thankful to live up on a hill. Our hearts go out to those who lost so much. Re-building will be costly and time consuming. We donated $$ to the Red Cross. It's going to be a long road for many people.
