Over the last 6 years we’ve had all kinds of birthday parties in this household. We’ve had family parties, friends parties, park parties, and even parties where I literally baked three full pans of baked ziti and six loaves of garlic bread to feed everyone before the cake and ice cream. In other words, we’ve had a lot of parties where I was in charge of everything, and though I have enjoyed them all I always ended up absolutely fatigued at the end.
So when Husband suggested a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese for our eldest my first reaction was to scoff.
Me: “I always plan the parties for the girls…I love it!”
Him: “You always end up so stressed you have a mini-meltdown the night before and loads of dishes and mess to clean up afterwards. Let’s just TRY one year where we make it easy on ourselves, eh?”
Me: [warily eyeing him] “Ok.”
* * * *
Now if you’re anything like me your first thought is probably along the lines of…”But the pizza! Who can eat that pizza??” The good news is that kids love the pizza, and as long as you’re not expecting something along the lines of Dallas’ fabulous Dough Pizzeria you should be pretty happy too.
The party started off with tokens for all of the kids while the pizza cooked. When the food was ready we were called over on the intercom where plates AND am employee awaited us. Just as I was preparing to start trying to fill up 10 kids’ drink glasses the employee informed me that they would be the ones taking care of serving the pizza and getting the kids whatever they wanted to drink.
Score 1 for Chuck E. Cheese.
After the pizza was finished the birthday girl ceremony began with Lilly getting crowned by Chuck E. Cheese and then presented with a “Birthday Kid” medal. She definitely thought this was the cat’s meow!
Next on the list was the birthday cake ceremony, wherein the super nice employee took care of lighting the candles while another offered to take pictures of her so I could enjoy the moment! They then proceeded to serve ALL of the kids both cake and ice cream, and cleaned up all of the dishes when everyone was done.
Score 2 for Chuck E. Cheese.
On to the ticket blaster:
This is basically a large tube that blows tickets at you…and you keep as many as you can catch. The ticket blaster looked like so much fun that our 3 year old has been constantly asking for HER next party to be at Chuck E. Cheese, too.
Score 3 for Chuck E. Cheese.
And just in case you’re wondering if any of the adults had any fun…
All in all it was a great STRESS-FREE birthday party, and one that I’m more than willing to repeat again next year. [F.Y.I. we had our party at the Preston/Park location, and I received absolutely no compensation for this article – my Chuck E. Cheese love is genuine! ]
