Darby's birthday party (no 17). A long anticipated and equally feared event. The day should have started off with "buckle your seatbelts" instead of "good morning". In retrospect, it wasn't that good. But it certainly could have been worse.
In the car, all of the forseeable supplies had been loaded. Card table and chair for Darby to open presents. Camcorder, tripod, digital camera, juice boxes, trash bags. More supplies being brought by the ex-wife to include 100 previously made cupcakes, balloons, cups for popcorn.
After much planing, I was begining to think we might pull this off relatively unscathed. We've only invited about 60 kids and their parents to have cupcakes, open presents, and watch a movie, can't be that bad, right?
Well, between the ex-wife and I, we spoke to three different theater managers on multiple occasions and felt reasonably comfortable that things were as much in order as they could be.
We couldn't buy tickets until the theater opened today, so while the ex was last minute supply shopping on her lunch break, I went to the theater to acquire said tickets on mine. The original plan was to see "Brother Bear" at 7pm, only to find that the theater that movie was playing in was 260+ seats instead of the 150 we were originally told. Crap, the first real problem. Since "renting out" a theater really means "buying all the seats", even at a $1 theater on half-price movie night, that many seats is not only overkill, but not quite so much the bargain we hoped for.
So I scoped out the other options. "Looney Tunes Back in Action", last showing at 5:15 (too cold). "Freaky Friday", a little too old for some of the younger ones we expect to be in attendance (too hot). "Spy Kids 3D", 7:25, that could work out (just right). So I asked how many seats were in that theater and was told 160. Excellent! So I doled out $80 and was given all 160 tickets.
But the original plan called for leaving the tickets at the box office with a note for employees to give tickets to those showing invitations or noting they were with Darby's party. I found very quickly that this was a poor idea. First, because the lady at the ticket booth was slow on the uptake, but also she wouldn't be the same employee working the booth this evening. I was worried about details being lost in the translation. So I took the tickets with me and figured I'd hand them out as people arrived.
Also, one last check with the manager to make sure we could arrive at 6:30 and get setup. I was assured that would be no problem.
So, since most of the kids invited were from Darby's school, I called the school and asked that they make an announcement that the movie selection had changed, and to be there at 7pm so that we could open presents before the movie got started.
At this point I was late for a meeting. Prior to getting to the theater I stopped by wal-mart to get more juice boxes for the party (bringing the total supply to 72 [three boxes of 24]), and on the way out I picked up a #3 from the in-house McDonalds because I could feel that the schedule was getting tight. So on the way from the theater to my work meeting already in progress I was zipping down I-240 at 70 MPH while scarfing down my quarter-pounder in one hand and calling someone at the meeting with my cell phone in the other hand to let them know the already obvious, that I'd be late. Somehow I was still driving straight.
[We'll snip the boring stuff about the meeting I was late for and leaving work to pickup the kids.]
The original plan called for the ex-wife to pickup Darby from school and get her fed and take her to the theater, and for me to pickup Shelby from school to get her fed, because she had dance team practice until 6pm.
Well, I realized that the ex was going to need tickets, so I swung by the school on the way home to leave some tickets with Darby, but when I was there and after talking to Amy and getting her status, I realized that the schedule was starting to look as though it were working against us. So I signed Darby out, went to find Shelby and explain to her dance coach that we needed to leave for her sister's party, and headed home to get the kids fed (and do their hair). This all seemed to work in our favor, and I think kept us on track, as after the kids ate and got ready and we got on the road and to the theater, it was 6:25.
WE ARE JUST NOW GETTING TO THE MEAT OF THE STORY!
As I mentioned, we got to the theater in time for our previously OK-ed 6:30 setup time. I grabbed the table and chair and had the kids follow me into the theater. I found the manager and let her know we were here and getting setup, at which time she promptly handed me 100 pairs of 3-D glasses (I had forgotten about those). We headed to the screen for Spy Kids, only to find... that there was a movie still playing. Crap! Second real problem. Flashback to the manager saying a 6:30 setup time would be fine, and to me verifying that the movie schedule listed the last showing of Spy Kids 3D at 3pm. WTF?
Turns out this was a shared theater. No one bothered to mention that in all of the conversations we had previously. "School of Rock" was in progress and wouldn't be done until 6:50, followed by five minutes of cleanup for the crew, giving us (ex-wife, her husband, and I) a whole five minutes to get set up. However, I found that it was difficult to be simultaneously outside handing out tickets and inside setting up.
Irrelevant. Too late. People, lots of them, were already showing up. I gave out as many tickets as I could, but noticed that the theater folks weren't particularly checking tickets anyway, so went back into the theater to help set up, hoping guests would just come on in as they got there. However, it's humorous to note that while outside handing out tickets, Darby was with me, holding one of two mylar balloons that her mother went through a great deal of trouble to acquire, so that guests would see us easier and know to go to us for tickets.
Well, goofing around with the balloon, she lost it and up up and away it went. If you knew the story her mother went through to get that balloon, you'd be laughing, too. Also while we were outside handing out tickets, I noticed that the line at the ticket booth was VERY long, which made me additionally glad I didn't leave the tickets at the booth, but an unexpected by product of this adventure was that it turns out that I ruined the evening for many other children. I saw a couple of cases of kids walking away crying while parents were saying "sorry, kiddo, it's sold out". Aparently they really wanted to see Spy Kids. One parent put two and two together and said, "so you're the one that has me in trouble because we can't see Spy Kids." As she was a little scary looking, I told her that I didn't think it would fill up and that as long as she had no problem with the certain commotion, she could join us. Fortunately I suppose, she said she already got tickets for Brother Bear instead.
Anyway, third big problem... since we could not go into the theater when expected, we stacked our supplies just outside the theater, and several parents sat their presents down by our stuff, prompting many others to do so as well. Now, in addition to having to carry all of our stuff into the theater, we had to also migrate the gifts.
Fortunately at this time we received a couple of reinforcements in the form of friends from work who brought their kids. They were a big help in getting our supplies into the theater and down to the front, as well as in preparing the popcorn.
Amy had acquired several large bags of popcorn from the theater. While I was setting up the camcorder and tripod, as well as the table and presents, the helpers began to fill cups with popcorn and I started to pass out juices. We started passing out popcorn as it became available.
Meanwhile many more kids were showing up and they all started running around the theater, often stepping on our supplies or knocking over popcorn or trying to peek at the presents or almost tripping over the tripod, etc. It is also important to note that at this point I had gotten at least four cell phone calls from parents that were running late or hadn't gotten the message about the changed movie and were trying to find us. So I'm running around with my cell phone to my ear trying to solve problems as they occured.
Once we got popcorn, juices, and 3-D glasses passed out, just about everyone was there at that point, so I took a moment to apologize to the parents for the chaos thus far and for having Darby's party on homework night. I also started to explained the plan, which was to open presents and sing happy birthday before the movie got started.
Of course, as we were VERY behind schedule, right in the middle of my announcement the movie started. No previews as I had hoped (for once), just straight into the movie. So I had to yell the rest of my announcement that was also slightly moot.
We also found it difficult to get Darby to open presents at a more rapid rate because she kept trying to watch the movie at the same time.
So, picture the scene... I estimate there were about 50 people in the theater. The movie is playing, all the kids had come down to the front to watch Darby open gifts, and even though we asked them to sit around the table and watch, since it was so dark (we asked for the house light to be left on, but that was yet another unfulfilled request), they all crowded around her to see what she was getting. This became a wild session of each kid grabbing their respective present from the table and trying to give it to Darby to open next. Darby asked several times for people to stop crowding her, Shelby was flipping out becuase I had given her a trash bag and asked her to collect trash from the gift wrapping for me and she couldn't get to it because of all the kids, and oh by the way, one of the kids vomited up her popcorn a few feet away from where we were (big problem number four). We tried to get the kids to move back, but we weren't really getting their attention, and some of them started to scream for no apparent reason. It was right about this time that I checked on my camcoder to find that it wasn't turning out very well. It was on night-shot since it was so dark, and I mostly just got the backs of kids as they crowded around Darby.
Are we having fun yet?
So after we got someone to cleanup the vomit, and the present opening began to wind down, the projector operator noticed the commotion below and stopped the film (some say it looked more like it broke about then). A moment of relief ensued. The house lights came on. The projector operator came down to help clean up the vomit at which time he explained he would start it back up when we were ready.
When the lights came on and Darby finished opening presents, we started to hand out the cupcakes (at which point we realized big problem number five... we forgot to bring napkins, and the icing on the cupcakes was already starting to melt) and the kids started running around again. One of them slipped pretty badly on the mostly-cleaned-up-but-still-wet vomit area. I say mostly because they had mopped it up and put some of that saw-dust looking "mystery stuff" on top of it and had cleaned that up, but the floor was still wet and it looked like there were still questionable particles in the area.
The little girl was okay, but she was shook up pretty bad as she hit pretty hard, to the extent that the theater had her parent fill out a report in case anything was determined damaged later. Of course, before the night was over, two other kids (including one of mind) slipped on the slick part of the floor while running around even though we told the kids to stay clear.
So we finally got the cupcakes handed out, and meanwhile had gotten some napkins from the theater personnel to hand out. Finally, we sung happy birthday to Darby, as she blew out the candle we put on her cupcake, followed by my giving a thumbs up to the projector operator so he could start the film as I crossed my fingers and hoped the movie wasn't actually broken, or that if it was they had fixed it while we were making use of the down time.
Things actually, and thankfully, calmed down at this point. We all watched the movie in relative peace. Although I spent the first few minutes packing up the presents and getting leftover supplies in order. And a few times during the movie I got up to pick up obvious trash, and walk around with some popcorn cups to see if anyone wanted more.
Once the movie was over, I stood at the door and thanked everyone for joining us. Unfortunately, no one had turned on the house lights so we were stuck there in the dark (the screen was off by this point, too) trying to get our supplies together. We finally got someone to turn them on as we got our stuff loaded into the vehicles. We also picked up the trash everyone left behind, then we got out of there at long last.
All in all, I think the kids had fun (this is the feedback I'm getting from parents), probably even the ones that slipped on the vomit-spot. One of the parents even told Amy they didn't think they would have been able to pull it off. She replied as I would have, saying that she wasn't sure we did pull it off. But in one respect we did... we were different. If nothing else, most who learned of what we were doing agreed that they hadn't thought of that. And I'm proud to say that, while we've had a few McDonald's and a couple of Perfect Swing parties, we've not yet done Chuck E Cheese for either of the girls' birthdays, and that's saying something, with regard to being different.
All in all, I'm just glad it's over. We didn't get home until 10pm, and the kids still had homework to finish and I insisted on baths even at that late hour, especially since one of them had slipped on the vomit-spot. The kids just got to bed, and I will be mulling this experience for some time. At some point, some low-quality (due to dakness) photos will be posted.
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