Pizza Party

Every year, the kids' Celiac Support Group has a gluten-free pizza party at Waldo's pizza, a local, and very hip, pizza joint. We're fortunate to have a place that accomodates GF pizza so well--it's a rare thing. Anyway, yours truly is the coordinator for kids toddler-10. I organized the party for all the kids, because our teen coordinator is having some pretty big health problems. Last year, it was a smash hit, so I expected a big turnout again this year. Saturday, January 31, was our date.

I had asked Waldo's to reserve 66 seats (according to my RSVP count), but had declined to fork out $200 additional dollars from our support group budget to reserve the room. Let me tell you, the seats they reserved were for people with very small rear ends. We were squished like sardines in every available booth and seat. But in the end, all was fine. There was tons of pizza, hot and good, and plenty of soft drinks to go around.

The bummer for my kids (the main thrust of my story) is this: Sethie had a B-ball game at 5 pm (the party was at 6 pm). All the boys went with Scott while I went to Waldo's to make sure everything got going. So the boys arrived about 45 minutes late.

When you order 23 or so pizzas, the most efficient way for the pizza place to do it is to run the pizzas through the oven in batches, generally in groups with the same toppings. I had ordered about 5 cheese pizzas (which is the boys' favorite), but unfortunately for the guys, Waldo's ran the cheese pizzas through first. So by the time the guys arrived, all the cheese pizzas had been devoured by the hordes. Poor babies. They had SO been looking forward to the party. Seth made the best of it by picking practically all the toppings (and cheese) off a Canadian bacon and pineapple. Zac and Blane flatly refused to eat anything else. So Scott and the boys were huddled in a corner of the restaurant, with two hungry children nursing their Sprites and a third one eating a naked pizza slice.

Now granted, the hunger was really their own faults. There were plenty of pizzas out there. In fact, Scott told them that this was dinner and they were not getting snacks when they got home. It was fair enough, but I still felt sorry for them.

The kicker came at the end. We have a local company in town called Olivia's Oven, which specializes in the best GF baked goods I've ever eaten. The owner had generously donated chocolate cupcakes for the event. The restaurant set out the cupcakes and everyone had at it.

Scott didn't know anything about Olivia's Oven, but he saw our group's oddball (very sweet, but a bit strange) carrying the cupcakes back to their family. Putting two and two together, Scott assumed that this person brought the cupcakes. So he told the boys, "No cupcakes!"

Poor, poor boys of mine!! No pizza or cupcakes, and they had to watch everyone else eat them.

Well, after a stinker of a party for the boys, I returned home with exactly three cupcakes (that's what was left). Maybe God was having a touch of mercy on them.

Pentagon pictures

The Pentagon is in the upper right hand corner, across the Potomac River.

Another view.


A bird's eye view of the Pentagon. Note the bathroom at the top of the picture. Guess everything just dumps into the Potomac.
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Here are some pictures of the Pentagon and the Washington D.C. exhibit at Briarwood Elementary. Zac actually won the drawing in his group and got to take the Pentagon home. So far, it's holding up, though the 9/11 Memorial bench was accidently ripped off by Seth.