Three Birthday Trade-Offs

Birthday Trade-Off #1
Every guest added to a home party costs me pennies. Every guest at Pump It Up costs me a kidney.

So we told Gresham: If you have a party at home you can invite all the friends you want. But if you have a party at Pump It Up you can only invite six.

“I can only have six people at my party?” he asked in his best imitation of a sixteen year-old.

“No,” I explained. “You can have fourteen kids at your party. You’ll be related to nine of them.”

Birthday Trade-Off #2
Having a Dad who’s a tightwad has its costs and benefits. On the one hand he doesn’t have to work as much as he would with credit card debt and a big mortgage payment. On the other hand, he’s too cheap to buy a cake and he has six hours in the middle of the week to do it himself.

This has its up and down sides as well. The up? You can ask for any cake you want and he’ll try to make it for you – he’s got the time. The down? While watching Dad struggle to make straight lines out of squirt-can icing, you may learn new words you’re not allowed to say at church or around grandparents and social workers.

Birthday Trade-Off #3
That much fondant and frosting plus pizza plus jumping can and will and did induce vomiting in the smallest party-goer.

Or is this phase one of Gresham’s scheme to make room for one more friend at next year’s party?

11 comments on “Three Birthday Trade-Offs”

noelle says:

Great cake… you should take orders from people other than your children… at least then you could make some money! 😛

Travis says:

Hilarious.

JLI says:

Wow, that’s an awesome cake! And where might one find fondant for home use? I always thought that was just something that people on the Food Network Challenges had access to make novice Betty Crockers’ like myself envious of their mad cake skillz.

September 25, 2009 at 2:54 pm

Shaun Groves says:

Hobby Lobby.

Log in to Reply

Cards Fan says:

I feel your pain on the party planning! With our 4 kiddos, birthday season (July 27 – Oct 9 officially) can become quite expensive if they are all allowed to have large parties. We have a “fun center” (fun for whom – that’party of our 5 year old little man tomorrow. and he is looking forward to it – but I am dreading the cash register.

We’ve taken an approach of only allowing “big” parties for milestone birthdays (i.e. 5 years, 10 years, 13 years, etc.). That helps keep the costs down a little – mostly a move by my wife to appease my … frugality.

In any event, your cake looks great, and I’m sure all had a great time!!

The Secret Life of Kat says:

Black icing on a white cake? That’s tough. Good job!

Stretch Mark Mama says:

Hubs made our (then turning) 6YO an Optimus Prime cake — just the face, though. Yours turned out well! Hubs has come to expect a backache on kid birthday weeks — what from bending over and frosting the thing for 3-4 hours. 🙂

We have those bouncy places out here in Portland (I know!) but my kids get to go to them only when they’re invited to other people’s parties. I always lean over and whisper in their ears “are you enjoying YOUR fake-pretend-birthday party, kids?”

Therapy.