The kids celebrated their seventh birthday at the Long Island Childrens Museum the first weekend of May. In our community, very few families host backyard parties for the younger kids. A party is "an event" to be conducted at a remote location, with special activities and-most importantly-no cleanup afterwards. For their 7th, Sam and Robert wanted something spy-themed and it just so happened the local children's museum was able to accommodate that request.
Donna made lovely e-invitations that looked much like the photo above, but with Robert in a Bond-like costume. He's not a big fan of wearing the correct costume to the party, as you can see above. He was "disguised" as soccer star Lionel Messi!
The party began with a welcome committee meeting the kids in the lobby and taking them to an activity room where they did some spy-related arts & crafts and games. Then the kids formed two groups: one group hid clues out in the main museum, and the other had to find them. A cool pretext to get the kids moving around.
Then it was back to the activity room for lunch, cake and party favors.
Donna was very clever with the party favor bags…
The party was very nice. The aftermath wasn't.
Later that evening, Sammy asked to go to her favorite Mexican restaurant for hot dogs, of all things. We went out and got dogs from the supermarket and grilled them instead. As we were putting the dinner in front of the kids, Sammy got violently ill and stayed sick for the next 30 hours. Robert got sick the following day, Bob the next after that and Donna the next after Bob. The whole house was sick with GI illness for the better part of 8 days, extending into Donna's birthday and Mother's Day. Thankfully, ours was the only family impacted; we were worried that people got sick because of the party.
We are all recovered now and looking forward to the end of school and the start of a long summer.
