Parker's Day of Jubilee

No longer are we "sixin'" (as in "fixin' to be six"). Six has arrived - and it arrived on Friday. This was a Very Big Deal, because:

1) The school's storybook parade (AKA "covert Halloween celebration") was held on Friday morning, as Halloween falls on Sunday.

2) Friday marked the kickoff of the school's United Way campaign, and students had the option of buying tickets to a faculty-staff volleyball game held in the afternoon, with proceeds going to the charity.

3) A rainy forecast last weekend motivated the PTA to move the fall carnival to this Friday night.

Parker, of course, chose to ignore the fact that all of the above represented a quirk of the calendar: "Mom, I get a parade, a volleyball game and a carnival for my birthday!"


Inspiration for our storybook parade costume was the well-loved picture book, "How I Became a Pirate." This appealed to Mom, because it only required (1) spending $3 at Super Target on a pair of sweatpants and (2) taking a pair of scissors to said sweatpants to transform them into tattered pirate trousers. The shirt was already in the closet. Only dilemma was which pirate hat to wear. We have several. As we were perusing the costume basket, I was reminded of a remark that Parnell made at the home of friends who have two girls:

"They have the same amount of junk that we have - it's just pink, with fairies on it."

A mom to girls, when going through our costume basket, would think that she had entered a parallel universe. Instead of tutus - pirate costumes. In lieu of fairy wands and Hannah Montana microphones - broadswords and shields.

Our pirate hat options included a black hat with skull and crossbones, a similar brown hat (the one that Parker chose) and a tricorn. We briefly considered wearing a knight costume (donned by Connor for his first storybook parade - book was "The Knight at Dawn" from the Magic Treehouse series) and carrying a stuffed cat, to represent the knight in the book "Good Night, Sir Knight," who is charged with taking care of a whole mess o' kittens. Option three: last year's astronaut costume, but we couldn't think of a good book tie-in ("Flat Stanley in Space?"). At the end of the day, the lure of playing swashbuckler proved too much, so it was a pirate's life for us.

I'll share photos from the parade in another post, but carnival pics are included here. As you can see, by early evening, the pirate costume had been abandoned in favor of a robot tee and helmet (turned up in our tour of the costume basket). Parker has been attending the South Hi Mount fall carnival since he was a toddler, but this was his first year as an actual matriculated student. As a result, his level of excitement was amps on eleven. Everything we did was a Very Big Deal.

We gave Mom a tour of the various playground attractions, and we ranked the slides in order of awesomeness:


We partook in silly string and confetti eggs:

Along with Thatcher and Brandon (AKA "Classic Batman"), we tore up the bounce house:

The cake walk was a source of some frustration, as the winner each round was the person standing to Parker's right. It happened again and again, without fail. Mom thought it was cool, though, that his first trip around the circle Parker ended up on the number six, representing his birthday. (She also found it quite amusing that this year's carnival organizers thought to combine the cake walk with karaoke - instead of a boom box blasting tunes, there was a keyboard player, a mike and a lyric feed. I kid you not.)

Glow sticks? Check.


All in all, it was a fantabulous birthday celebration.