Monkey Bags

The gear-up for Seth's birthday party on Saturday (snow forcasted!) began in earnest yesterday. Blane and I headed to Wal-Mart to get supplies. He was a great little helper, but did get restless at the end as I was trying to decide whether Raisinets or Milk Duds would make better monkey ears on the cupcakes (I ended up going with Milk Duds--I'm not a big raisin fan).

I carted the loot home and spent the afternoon making the goody bags for his party. Seth was anxious to help, but I did talk him out of cutting out the monkey faces for the bags (sheepishly, I admit I do care what those mothers think when their kids bring those bags home). So Seth decided he would help me fill the bags. I introduced the Industrial Revolutionary concept of assembly lines to Seth (by the way, why didn't anyone think of that before the 18th century?) And that's when the problem started. What I forgot to take into account at the store was that Zac, Seth and Blane would all want goody bags as well (I just went on the number of invitations I sent out). So I needed to fill 11 bags, and only had some treats in quantities of 8. Sigh. No matter how I was going to spin this, there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

After an outburst and a fit of crying after he threw himself on the bed upstairs, I explained to Seth that, hey! we can go to the Dollar Store and get cooler stuff to fill his bag that only he would get, since he was the birthday boy and all. The tears dried up and he immediately began asking when we could do just that. I explained that since it was Wednesday afternoon and Zac had homework and a project due on Thursday, we would probably need to wait until Thursday afternoon. So guess what we'll be doing today...

By the way, the monkey bags turned out super-cute. I think we'll hang our assorted house monkeys around the dining room for effect on Saturday.