Now I’m supposed to write about the best party I remember of 2010. I don’t get out much anymore, I guess, because I’m having trouble remembering much. My biggest party memories would have to be split between our October birthday bash and the November birthday party of a friend’s daughter.
We have four birthdays in October (in our house; there are two more in the immediate family), so each year we have a big party for all four of them at once. This year, it was a Halloween/fall party, too. It ended up being a bit last-minute in the setup, as they always seem to, but since I prefer the focus to be on the kids getting together and playing, it worked out well. We had bobbing for apples, which was a lot of fun to watch. The kids played zombie tag outside. And I made a huge cake where I tried to incorporate all the themes that everybody had wanted for the party. The girls wanted fall and wedding themes, and the boys wanted soldiers and Halloween. So I ended up with a wedding cake topper, but I shredded the veil and drizzled red food coloring on them to make them look like zombies. I put them at the top of the cake, surrounded by a pumpkin patch. Finally, I got some toy soldiers (sent by the government, obviously!) and set them up in an assault on the dangerous zombie bride and groom. Success!
In November, our friends’ daughter turned 5. This happened while my mother was in the hospital for her cancer treatment, and my father was visiting to help out, so he came along with us. My friend’s parents were also at the party, and her father and my father really hit it off. Normally, her father is a bit of a wallflower, just sitting on the couch and not saying much. But with my father there, our dads talked and talked and talked all afternoon and all evening, and we had to practically drag my dad out the door to shut them up and leave. It turned out that our fathers joined the Air Force within weeks of each other, and were at the same base for basic training at the same time. This is just another in a long string of coincidences that have linked our lives since before we met seven years ago (and apparently, since before we were even born!). We all enjoyed watching the dads hit it off, especially when they started a game of “mine is colder than yours,” trying to decide whether Michigan or Colorado was colder and snowier. I’m not sure who won that one.