Party line

I'm nearly completely organized. I mean, for the upcoming months, specifically. At the end of April we're going to California for a marathon - I have flights, hotels, and rental car booked. Dash is signed up for a week of gymnastics summer camp (how cool does that sound? I would have so loved to do that - here I am living vicariously - but I think he'll like it too) in July, and I've just about arranged the week at the beach in the summer that I've been promising the kids ever since the nicer weather started.

There's just one thing outstanding. And it's coming up before any of that: Dash's birthday party.

I'm stumped. Everything's different this year, because he's in "big" school, so I don't know the moms of any of his friends any more. I can't just invite everyone over for a big siblings-parents-and-all playdate, because for one thing, six-year-old boys are too old for that, and for another, I don't want to invite a bunch of strangers. I feel like we need a specific thing, but I don't know what that thing is.

I thought of laser tag, which he and his father would love (maybe the latter moreso, truth be told), but the only place that doesn't seem to have a prohibitive age or height limit is 30 minutes away, and they only offer parties for 9 guests (or more). We don't have 8 people to invite, unless we just randomly pick kids he knows (and then where do you stop?), and bringing fewer would make it a two-venue party with cake here and laser tag there, which I can't really do to everyone who would have to ferry their kid around all that much but then not even get to eat the cake. Besides, I'm not entirely sure all his friends' mums would be happy with their peace-loving still-five-year-olds (perhaps) brandishing guns and bloodthirstily peppering their friends with laser beams.

I had great hopes of a bowling party, but Dash didn't want to. I thought of a swimming party at the pool, but our pool doesn't "technically," as the helpful employee behind the desk told me, do those. Despite the fact that we'd just seen one going on.

The thing is, time is advancing. The party needs to be on either the 21st or 22nd of this month, which is a mere two weeks away. (Damn. Two? I've been ostriching on that.) So it's either no party or I just invite the kids over and we think of something on the fly. No party is perfectly reasonable, except that we seem to have got ourselves into this - our kids each have a birthday party every year, and I think all Dash wants is a chance to get his friends together and show them his birthday light sabre and eat cake. Surely I can give him that.

So I think it'll be a Star Wars party, in very little but name. Maybe I can come up with something a bit easier than the very elaborate sew-a-Jedi-cloak-for-each-kid sort of things I've read about on other people's websites. Elaborate is not me. Crafty is not me.

Cupcakes and candles, though, that I can do.