{"id":9638,"date":"2006-05-20T16:56:40","date_gmt":"2006-05-20T23:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/05\/20\/party-time-3.html"},"modified":"2006-05-20T16:56:40","modified_gmt":"2006-05-20T23:56:40","slug":"party_time_3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/20\/party_time_3.html","title":{"rendered":"Party time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Had Katherine’s birthday party today at the local Color Me Mine. Notes …<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We ended up with six kids besides Katherine — 3 boys and 3 girls, 2 from church and 4 from school. Everyone seemed to have a good time. For the record (and just to see where we have repeats next year), we had Evan, Anna, Colin, and Aden from school, Jena and Sarah from church.\n
  2. The parents all were polite about the drop-off (nearly everyone was on time, and those who weren’t had some very good traffic problems as a justification) and were pretty good about the pick-up.<\/p>\n
  3. We’d scheduled two hours (which is the studio’s recommendation). Note: for the circumstances and plans and age, 1½ hours would have been much better. We were really struggling to keep the kids occupied for the last 45 minutes or so.<\/p>\n
  4. The kids got to choose from a little (3 inches long or so) butterfly, bee, or inchworm\/caterpiller. The girls all chose the first, the boys the last.<\/p>\n
  5. The kids got briefed on selecting paints, and on painting the bisque. This was where we ran into the most time trouble, because the kids weren’t really into the whole “do it carefully” and “multiple coats” kind of thing. We ended up getting a second item for them to do, a 4×4 tile, with the thought that they could draw something of their own, etc. That worked out in even a shorter time, since they wanted to draw things that were too small for them to easily paint. <\/p>\n
  6. By the time the kids were done with their art, we’d only used up 1 hour of the 2 hour time slot. This worried me.<\/p>\n
  7. We did cake and punch at that point. Margie’d picked up a yummy strawberry ice cream cake from Coldstone with various Barbie decorations, and we split it up between the attendees (including a slice to the very nice lady who was running the shop). Okay, that took 10 minutes.<\/p>\n
  8. Hmmm. Gift opening. We’ll drag this out. One gift from the gift table at a time, presented by the giver. Oohs and aahs abound. Lots of arts and crafts gifts, interestingly, plus a game or two, a book, a fun purse. Good stuff. Another 10-15 minutes, max.<\/p>\n
  9. We were down to the last activity on the slate, with some 40 minutes to go. And the activity itself was trivial — goody bags. This is de rigeur <\/em>for parties these days. And even though the kids would be getting their fun ceremics, that would be “eventually” (it’s possible but not likely that they will be fired and ready by the end of school next week. We collected phone numbers.)<\/p>\n

    So goody bags it was. I’d voted for stickers. Kitten voted for candy. We compromised and got mostly sticker and a few packages of jelly bellies. <\/p>\n

    My original thought had been to simply divvy up the stickers — or maybe, at most, let people draw them from a bag and then trade them if they wanted. It was at this point that I got my one brilliant idea of the day: a white elephant style of drawing. A kid draws a sheet of stickers from the bag. He can keep the sheet, or force a trade with a sheet that someone else has already drawn.<\/p>\n

    Overall, this worked well, and chewed up another good 15-20 minutes.<\/p>\n

  10. So, there we were with another 20-25 minutes to kill. Which, somehow, we managed to, with “Simon Says” and this and that. And the parents came, on time, and took their kids, and all was right with the world.<\/p>\n

    Went to dinner with Jackie and Kaylee at White Fence Farms, which was fun, too.<\/ol>\n<\/p>\n

    Two observations:<\/p>\n

    A. 90 minutes, rather than 2 hours, would have been enough.<\/p>\n

    B. The kids were about a year or two too young for this, as a group. I’d recommend age 7, at least, for this sort of activity.<\/p>\n

    And one more:<\/p>\n

    C. As irksome, annoying, worrisome, intrusive, aggravating, etc. as my job sometimes gets, I so <\/em>made the right career move when I changed back from teaching to IT …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Had Katherine’s birthday party today at the local Color Me Mine. Notes … We ended up with six kids besides Katherine — 3 boys and 3 girls, 2 from church…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10918,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/19\/a_party_to_remember.html","url_meta":{"origin":9638,"position":0},"title":"A party to remember","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 19-May-07 9:59am","format":false,"excerpt":"We had Katherine's birthday party last evening, down at the Lone Tree Rec Center.\u00a0 For a fairly reasonable fee schedule you get:: Two hours use of the party room off...","rel":"","context":"In "Parenting"","block_context":{"text":"Parenting","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/parenting"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8087,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/05\/24\/party_time_exce.html","url_meta":{"origin":9638,"position":1},"title":"Party time, excellent","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 24-May-05 10:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"So Saturday was Katherine's birthday party, the one she invited friends to. It was the first of these sorts of parties we've done, and it was a success, I think...","rel":"","context":"In "Parenting"","block_context":{"text":"Parenting","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/parenting"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4882,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/12\/14\/study_in_contra.html","url_meta":{"origin":9638,"position":2},"title":"Study in contrasts","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 14-Dec-03 10:04pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Saturday Afternoon Katherine's friend from day care, Thomas, was having a birthday party at Nathan's Funstastic Fun, an amazing indoor amusement park (complete with bounce house, ball room, ferris wheel,...","rel":"","context":"In "Parenting"","block_context":{"text":"Parenting","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/parenting"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14804,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/05\/16\/birthday-party-madness-recap.html","url_meta":{"origin":9638,"position":3},"title":"Birthday Party Madness recap","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 16-May-09 9:58am","format":false,"excerpt":"We were down at Lone Tree Rec Center again this year -- why give up on a good thing (and Katherine was calling the shots there). Total of 12 kids, only four of whom were girls, which meant tons of capering-about, top-of-lung-screaming third-grader hi-jinx. Hilarity, photo ops, and migraine ensued.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Food & Drink"","block_context":{"text":"Food & Drink","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/food-drink"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15273,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/21\/unblogged-bits-for-tuesday-21-july-2009.html","url_meta":{"origin":9638,"position":4},"title":"Unblogged Bits for Tuesday, 21 July 2009","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 21-Jul-09 6:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... Maddow Revisits Buchanan Segment, Adds Corrections (VIDEO): The Huffington Post News Team Sidewalks are for Kids!!: lskenazy Flashback to 1933: US ad industry digs Hitler: McLaren+Torchinsky The Truth About Canadian Health Care: Alan John\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marriage Equality"","block_context":{"text":"Marriage Equality","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/marriage-equality"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12368,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/05\/19\/feeding_frenzy.html","url_meta":{"origin":9638,"position":5},"title":"Feeding frenzy","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 19-May-08 12:15am","format":false,"excerpt":"Katherine's birthday party. UPDATE: So we did Katherine's party once again at the Lone Tree Rec Center. Still a pretty good deal -- cake, pizza, use of the pool,...","rel":"","context":"In "Parenting"","block_context":{"text":"Parenting","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/parenting"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2375\/2503950130_55337a1626.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}