Assembling Avengers

It started out as a conversation around the dinner table.  Alan and Ben saying all the things they wanted to do in Utah when we visit for the summer.  Ben started whining about how "Alan ALWAYS gets to have his birthday in UTAH...."  Alan approached me quietly after dinner and asked if he could have a party in Alabama before we left, instead.  I agreed and told him to go make a list and decide what he wanted to do. Then I promptly forgot.

The Thursday before Memorial day he came to me with his list and reminded me of our conversation.  I started to list all the reasons why it just wasn't going to work.  The holiday weekend, moving, packing, etc... but then I saw him losing all confidence in me and so I grabbed that list and started texting some moms.

I'm usually a planner, especially for birthdays... This year Ben did most of the planning for his but we pretty much started working on the thought process right after Christmas, so I was way out of my element pulling this off in 24 hrs. Alan wanted a, "swimming, baseball, Iron Man", birthday.  We borrowed a dodgeball slip n' slide from a friend. Swimming?, well at least there was water involved, CHECK.  Baseball? um, dodge ball is almost the same, right? CHECK.  And Saturday morning, Alan and I headed to the party store at 8:30 a.m.  Would you believe they had NO Avenger paraphernalia? Zero, nada, not even plates.  We ended up at Walmart where we searched for an Iron Man piñata, the last of Alan's requests.  We ended up purchasing a large cupcake, determined we could DIY it into Tony Stark.  

Masks and t-shirt capes were all from the dollar store. Store bought cupcakes and a box of ice cream sandwiches.  Ben even scrounged a tiny Iron Man toy from the bottom of the LEGO bin to put in Alan's cupcake along with the #1 candle I convinced them both was actually a #7. I thought I was done.  
Alan - "mom, what about my shirt?"
Me - "what shirt?"
Alan - "the birthday shirt you always make"
Me - "ummmmmm......"

I think it was still wet when he put it on, but he didn't care.  He told us later it was the "best not real birthday ever".