Carter's 7th Birthday

For Carter's birthday, it was our intention was to avoid the over-the-top, tumultuous birthday celebration that we have witnessed here. When it came to actually sending out invitations, we realized that we really had to invite around 8 kids. In the end, we had 15 kids plus 2 moms plus 3 nannies and  a driver. For really, not inviting the whole class would have been a special kind of Lima insult...as far as we can tell, some families invite several grades to their parties.

Ian has a lot of tickets for
the prize booth.

It took some coordination, but with a hired van to help out, we got a bunch of the kids (and their backpacks!) from school over to TGIFridays at Jockey Plaza, our local mall. We even hired a 14yr-old babysitter, so with her and Jen and Mariza, we had plenty of people to herd the animals. The lunch was loud and fun, though there were moments when the chaos threatened to take over. The kids were happy, but I think the restaurant experience was lost on them, they were just so excited to be together for a party. We could have just fed them a pot of macaroni in the alley and they would have been fine. The highlight was a bunch of the boys daring each other to eat CELERY dipped in the RANCH sauce. "Eat it, eat it, EAT IT EAT IT!" The chant rang through the room. The food came, but all too soon us adults had to leave our half-eaten plates and get the party over to the video arcade.

The arcade provided a room for the party, with a party-leader and a facepainter. There was some dancing, some little games in which Jen and the only 3 girls attending took the prize, and cake. We made the mistake of passing out the 2hr video-game passcards during the cake, so the next thing we know we are surrounded by half-eaten plates of cake, still spinning in the wake of the rapid exodus towards the game rooms.

It's hard to both reach the pedal and steer.
Carter and Ian cooperate.

We stationed ourselves and the babysitter to guard exits, but like the Las Vegas motto, what happens in the arcade stays in the arcade. Normally, Carter knows he is not allowed to play violent shooter games, but we said nothing and just let them go crazy. But it was not all murder and mayhem, there was also wholesome bumper cars, air hockey, ticket-earning games for prizes, etc. It was 2 hours of freeplay, with lots of big smiles (though in this age bracket, some of those smiles are missing a lot of teeth).



At the end of the 2hrs, kids started to leave with the little goodie bag of sopresas (surprises), dirty, sticky, toothy, happy, exhausted. Jen, in that "to-hell-with-convention" manner I love in her,  suggested that she, Carter and I go BACK to TGIFridays so we could actually enjoy the birthday meal this time. And, of course, this time she and I could each have a stiff drink. The same waiter helped us, highly amused. I may have missed Carter's actual birthday, delayed on my return from Patagonia, but this long Wednesday afternoon sure made up for it.

Photo proof of our failure as parents.

Julito playing defense on air hockey.

Porter and his dad, Mike, tear up the
road on their Harley.