Phoebe is 7

Phoebe had her 7th birthday party today at Carabiners in New Bedford.   She had been vacillating between a few choices over the prior few months which I believe included Bounce (an inflatable jumpy house place) and Bay State Gymnastics where we have had three or four birthdays at this point between the two girls.  I had been hoping she would pick Carabiners but it was her choice so I did not push her on it.  One weekend we were climbing and a birthday party arrived and we watched the staff work with the kids and Phoebe was sold.  Cristin called and reserved the date and we were faced with the birthday list which proved to be much more difficult than prior years as we now have neighbor friends and bus friends and friends from out of town and friends in other homerooms and we wanted to keep a reasonable number.  There were a few last minute additions and we thought of a few more after it was too late.  The problem is that the more people you include, the more excluded the uninvited feel.   This might have been the last big group and next year we might have to focus on a core group of maybe a half dozen.  

I am embarrassed to say that Cristin and I completely failed to get many pictures.   It was a little busy, well, at least for me because I was belaying the kids.  Cristin was just gabbing with the moms.  We have had less documentation from her last two birthdays than Aunt Sarah had at her birthdays in 1976 which was handled by my father with his silent super8 and the camera he had purchased in Alaska which had exactly zero automatic functions.  I think in the future we are going to sucker one of the media-savvy parents (i.e. Doug) to handle this. We had around sixteen kids or so with some random siblings and the gym was able to handle it.  They had three belayers and myself and that was plenty to keep the kids busy. I was watching them fairly closely in the beginning when they were sitting for the safety lecture and I could see a few getting anxious staring up at the wall.  

What is great about that place is that it is a completely positive atmosphere.  Everybody leaves there feeling confident.  After climbing upstairs for half an hour we went downstairs and climbed the ladder and net and one of the wall climbs and then went into the yoga room and had cake.   Phoebe had wanted a cake from the movie Pets and Cristin had spoke with the folks at Artisan’s Bakery in Rochester.  The Bakery is more or less a garage attached to someone’s house in ruralish Rochester but I would put their cakes up against the best bakery in any major city.  For Phoebe’s 6th we had a monster three-tier Star Wars themed cake that was a little over the top so this year Cristin ordered a single layer.   This did not seem to present any kind of constraint to Artisan’s who produced a 15+ lb behemoth with three edible Pets and an entire structure built from fondant.  After cake we departed to make room for the next party and Aunt Megan the cousins came back to the house.  Their first instinct was to hit the drum room so we sent them upstairs while the adults sat and vegetated waiting for Poppy and Tootsie to arrive.  We got dinner from Nicks which had just be renovated and sat by the fire while the girls went upstairs to watch the movie Big.  Based on the noise from the drums and legos and ping pong table it was pretty clear nobody was actually watching. After everybody left the girls sat with me and we played funky carts by the woodstove while Cristin snoozed.  Time marches on.