a Harvey party!
Harvey's actual birthday was a long time ago, it feels like. Time stretches in the summer. But now, a full 23 days after he turned ten, we brought his birthday season to a close by finally throwing him a party.
party crew
It wasn't just disorganization or laziness that led to the delay—the reason we held off on doing something in June was that his friend Jack would be away then, but back in July. Jack usually travels all summer, so I don't know that he's ever been to one of Harvey's parties... so naturally it seemed worthwhile to schedule the celebration on a day he'd actually be around. Of course, after we'd made that decision disorganization and laziness played their part in keeping me from actually inviting anyone until it was very nearly too late. Happily our friends are flexible and were all able to make it to a party at lunchtime on a Saturday with five and a half days advance notice. Good thing, because they would have been sad to miss it!
Harvey chose a board game theme—well, board and card game. He wanted a chessboard cake, but since I didn't know if I had the technology to make that happen I proposed something a little simpler. He was fine with the idea; I think it came out pretty elegant.
like those dice?
The party started at 11, and nobody was too concerned about board gaming. Harvey was mostly just delighted to have his three favorite friends together in one place. Since naturally we invited families, Zion and Lijah had people to play with too, leaving the adults to relax and chat. Harvey wanted hot dogs and coleslaw for lunch; I grilled 28 hot dogs, which was just barely enough. After lunch the play started to get a little violent—the ten- and eleven-year-old boys we know are partial to sword-play—so we redirected the kids towards the games inside. With the food and the adults outside, there was plenty of room in the house for games of Ticket to Ride, Zingo, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh to all happen simultaneously. Only one of those led to violence, so that was good.
It was all so much fun it was almost time to go before we remembered cake and presents! Luckily, after we did that half of our guests were still able to stick around for another hour or more. That's what we like to see. Thanks for turning ten, Harvey... Happy Birthday!