Tis the Season-for Birthday Parties!!

"And the $200.00 includes a character visit from Dora or Diego" stated the birthday party fliers conveniently located at the front desk. $200.00! Are you kidding me? That may be the sum total of ALL my childhood birthday parties, sans the character visit. Although I did have a Mother Goose pinata on my 10th birthday...dangling off a broom handle!

Yes, the cost of birthday parties and the stress to be as entertaining as the last party this same group of kids attended takes all the frosting off my cupcake. The last party was at a children's gymnastics 'club.' I remember reading their flier and thinking how great is was that they provided the cake, entertainment and cleanup for the tidy sum of $190.00. "What a great deal" I remarked to the mothers in attendance. "This would be a great place to have Tristan's party in September!" I remarked. I was so smug because in my mind I had this birthday party thing sewn up. It would be here and all I had to do was call in about a month to reserve the date and time. I even passed around copies of the flier to those present. That seemingly harmless act would be my downfall!

This brings me to my current, frantic, keeping up with the Joneses state I'm in. I found an invitation to a party from one of my son's friends in his school cubby yesterday. At first glance it looked innocent enough-a cute Power Ranger on the front. I opened it up and was horrified by the information it contained-this mother had the audacity to have booked the aforementioned gymnastics club for HER son's party! Of all the dirty, lowdown, growl, growl, aaargh!!!! She trumped me! Now what was I supposed to do? Her son's party was only 2 weeks from the already planned in my mind party for Tristan! Kids get bored easily. Who wants to go to the same place for three birthday parties in one summer??? I don't want to be the 'copycat' mother!!