Jedi Partay Redux, continued

Part II: Location, location, location
Stanford E-Quad. Perfect. Grand porticos, long, wide paths, spacious lawns, grassy knolls, ancient tree in an arena.


Part III: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
5:00 p.m. Kids arrive; free time
5:15 p.m: Kids assemble sandwiches to eat later.
5: 30 p.m. Treasure Hunt
5:50 p.m. Eat sandwiches, unveil and eat cake
6: 15 Light saber combat instruction
7:15 Free time
7:30 The End

Part IV: Gang aft agley
Which is to say, "Often go awry"--I'm quoting Scottish poet Robert Burns, from whose poem "To a Mouse" the line comes: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/ Gang aft agley". (Brainy, but I can't take credit. I remembered Robert Burns and his poem thanks to its appearance in a wonderful book called The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Hidden Gallery. It's the second in what I think will be a three-part series, Part III of which I am eagerly awaiting. If I get a spare hour (hah!) I'll write about it.)

But I digress. So. Gang aft agley:

Jedi Partay Redux: Tai's 8th birthday

Part I: The Cake

This year, I got to bake and frost a cake from scratch, instead of having to order a dreadful, (and dreadfully) overpriced Baskin Robbins ice cream cake featuring a Star Wars theme. All the um, wisdom literature warns us not to attach our happiness to ridiculous stuff like cakes, but there it is. In my still unenlightened mind, homemade cakes expresss All That is Good (love, mostly) and franchise store-bought cakes topped with licensed mini-figures are evil incarnate.

Which is not to say that our Good Cake was not topped with licensed minifigures. Oh, no. License upon license upon license, actually. Dan arranged several of his LEGO Star Wars/Clone Wars guys and a small LEGO military vehicle in a tiny battle scene. The First Battle of Geonosis (the Arena Battle), to be specific.

However, this flurry of licensing atop my devil's food cake with buttercream frosting (original recipe from Grandma J, who baked this cake for her children) was mitigated by the following:

• Dan doesn't own most of the minifigures represented in the actual battle. So he improvised, figuring correctly that his friends probably didn't even know what the First Battle of Geonosis was and therefore wouldn't notice or care about the missing figures.
• The battleship was of Dan's own design.
• Dan arranged the figures himself at the party.

We watched a clip of the battle on YouTube

to get the frosting just right—a sort of terra cotta/sandstone color. The end result was dangerously close to pink, but since the guys on top were fighting a battle to the death, it didn't matter.

Ta-daa:

So for those of you keeping score at home, it looks like this in my book:

Star Wars franchise..…..........................................................+10 Dark Side

Battle of Geonosis (from Episode II: The Clone Wars)..….....+5 DS

With LEGOs..…......................................................................+5 DS

But LEGO's cuten up violence....................................................................+3 Light Side

And were improvised.................................................................................. +5 LS

Dan-designed starship..................................................................................+5 LS

decades-old cake recipe..............................................................................+10 LS

homemade frosting.....................................................................................+10 LS

the exact color of the dust on Geonosis....................................+ 5 DS........+5 LS for effort

Dan did all the decorating............................................................................+5 LS

So that's Dark Side 25, Light Side 43.

Up Next: Location and Letting Go 

  

Ain't no party like a Jedi party

Now I know why people have their children's birthday parties at places other than home.

Two hours of mayhem, with breaks for cake and one game which required kids to be silent. Because it was all outside, and because the only food we served was cake and juice, there wasn't much mess to clean up, but I was not prepared for the astronomical levels of frenzied energy that seven little boys with pool-noodle lightsabers can generate. After the party, I was (and continue to be) exhausted.