In a bid to get them out of the house, we parked the cars in the street and decked out the garage. It all went swimmingly for a while, until a handful of the boys just started shouting at the tops of their voices! I don't think they were even shouting real words; just "Agh" noises. We were attempting to play "Wax Statues" (made-up name for musical statues) but all attempts to explain the rules were completely drowned out by the cacophony. My son and I looked at each other in despair just as one boy shouted in the face of a four year old girl who promptly burst into tears. And this was ten minutes into a 2.5 hour party.
We had organized several games, mostly of the elimination type, which basically meant that before very long we had the eliminatees standing around, shouting and hitting each other with garage objects. Why? It was when I saw a skateboard held aloft that I realized our garage probably wasn't the most kid-friendly place to be, so inside we went.
Many games were abandoned on account of the potential for damage or just lameness- (bobbing for apples and a Halloween Twister game). One that was quite popular was the "Guess what this is" game, where you blindfold the kids, stick their hands into bowls of gooey stuff and have them guess what it is. Peeled grapes for eyeballs, cut up red peppers for tongues, that sort of thing. I had them write down their answers on pre-printed sheets (oh, yes, I was that organized) which I then stupidly left on a table for later adjudication, allowing the criminal element to erase their answers and write the correct ones in. Sigh. There were so many "winners" we had to have a dance off!
Meanwhile the kids who hadn't wanted to join in (since when did participation become optional?) began hurling parts of my sectional sofa at each other. Not just the small decorative cushions, but the huge snap-your-neck ones you sit on. Hurled not only at each other but at walls containing pictures and a giant TV screen. Sigh.
I can't really remember the last hour (and I didn't have a drop to drink). It was all a bit of a blur. I did hear one of the main protagonists complain to his mother on leaving that "it was totally out of control". Flaming cheek!
This just about sums it up!(And yes, I wore a scary snaky thing.)
