Monday, July 20, 2009

Happy birthday kid, where does your dad keep the beer?


WHAT NOW?

Our girls were invited to a friends birthday party yesterday. This particular friend has a grandmother who has a pool, so every year she has a Hawaiian themed pool party. It's a great way to go when you have a pool and a summer birthday. Every year we go to it my wife and I try to come up with new and exciting ideas for our girls birthdays, both of which come in December. Your options are really limited with winter birthdays. I mean, how many bowling or movie parties will the kids tolerate. At least we still have 5 months before we have to come up with something!

This particular kid's birthday parties have become more and more difficult for my wife and I to attend. You see, the parents of this kid and us used to be really good friends, about 5 or so years back. Over the years we had less and less in common and you can say we kind of split up as couple friends. Now, about the only time we socialize with them is, you guessed it, their kids birthday pool party. Last year my wife "conveniently" had to take a long training run, and met us at the party just as it was ending. I thought about telling her that this was her year to take the girls, but thought better of it and we both went. YEAH!!!

So there we sat with them around the table, drinking a beer, watching the kids have a blast in the pool while we searched deep for any kind of small talk. The wife of this couple really has no problem keeping the conversation going, mostly because she loves to talk about herself. My wife and I do an excellent job of nodding our heads, blurting out the occasional "uh-huh" and smiling, lots and lots of smiling. This really must be some form of torture on other countries. "Maybe more beer will help" I keep thinking.

All kids birthday parties follow the same timeline:

1. kids play
2. kids eat
3. kids watch birthday kid open presents
4. kids thank birthday kid and parents
5. parents take kids home

Number 5 on this list could not come soon enough for us, but for some reason steps 2 and 3 took longer than expected and we could not really rush step 4 without looking like total douche bags, right?

We got home after the 2.5 hour ordeal, put our feet up, and were quiet, for a long time. That is until the girls came off their birthday sugar high and wanted to play. Giddy up!!!

PEACE OUT DADS!

3 comments:

  1. haha my bday parties look just like that picture ;0)

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  2. oops i should say my bday parties when i was a kid.

    btw don't you hate when you get older and you realize you don't have a lot in common with lots of people?? i'm basically friendless lol

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  3. Nothing like an agonizing kid birthday party whose parents used to be your friends to have you LONGING for home and quiet time.
    I wonder if the wife keeps talking just to fill the silence, or if she just thinks that herself as topic is as interesting to you as it is to her?
    Glad you survived and the kids came off their sugar high.

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