The Chaos that is Michael's Birthday Party

I’m fairly sure that when Lorenz came up with the Chaos Theory, it was on the heels of his 6 year olds birthday party. We had opted to keep Michael’s birthday party out of our house in years past, because it’s a rather small space. This year, for some reason, we lost our minds and decided to have a portion of the party at the house.

We started with an hour of tubing at the Snow Bowl’s tubing hill, which seemed to be enjoyed by everyone. I was bit disappointed that the upper portion of the hill was closed off due to lack of snow. It’s pretty steep, and you can gather some really good speed. It’s all for the best, I suppose, as many of the kids (and adults) had never been tubing before, so the slower hill was better for them. The weather was partly sunny and warm, perfect tubing weather. We were smart enough to reserve the hill after hours, so we had the entire hill and all the tubes to ourselves.

After tubing, everyone convoyed back to the house (much to the surprise of our next door neighbor) for some cake and ice cream. Somehow, we managed to fit everyone comfortably inside, and the kids even managed to find enough toys to play with without killing each other.

Michael requested Doritos as the pre-cake appetizer, so we served up a big bowl of it for the kids. Now, imagine, if you will, seven 5 and 6 year old kids, who have just returned from tubing. Very few, if any, have washed their hands (lots of dads at the birthday party) since entering the house. Throw in an 18 month old whose fingers see the light of day for only a minority of the time he’s awake, because they’re usually in his nose, mouth, or ears. Now, have all these kids eat Doritos out of one bowl, and you have yourselves a great opening to an outbreak movie, where a virus wipes out half of the Earth’s population. Needless to say, the bowl was sent to the EPA afterwards for disposal.

For the cake, Sal made not one but two awesome Herbie cakes, one vanilla and one chocolate. Not only did they look good, but they were delicious as well. We loaded the kids up on cake and ice cream, and, after Michael prodded people to finish up, we opened presents. Michael took in a good haul this year, but I was reminded of how anal Sal and I are about what toys we allow Michael to play with. We give our family lists of what is acceptable, and what the kids are interested in. When almost complete strangers give him gifts, you never know what you’re going to get. The best gift, in my objective opinion, was the one from Sal and me: a Herbie t-shirt.

After loading up the kids on sugar and caffeine, and getting them all excited about new toys that they couldn’t take home, we sent them away. Bear in mind that we tubed from 4 in the afternoon until 5, didn’t eat cake until 5:30, opened presents at around 6. So now it’s 6:30 in the evening, and we’re sending 5 year olds home for dinner with their blood sugar content at somewhere around 25%. I felt the need to apologize to the parents as they left for the slim chance they had of getting their kids to eat any sort of nutritious dinner when they got home. As I mentioned, most of the parents were dads, so they didn’t seem to care. After everyone was gone, the cakes were disassembled, the Doritos bowl was realizing self awareness, wrapping paper was strewn across the floor, we ended up with a happy six year old. And that’s all that matters.

Only 6 months until the next birthday party.


















Close call!





Derek & Mike helping out.













The U.S. Chair Inflating doubles team at work.

The cake aftermath.

A happy six year old.