Children's Birthday Parties

My friend invited me to her 3 year old son's birthday party and it was going to be at the LA Zoo which was very exciting. I was going to bring my hip flask, take the birthday cake and sit in a corner and just talk to the animals. Apparently for $8,000 they will bring you a tiger cub to pet but my friend is very cheap and would not buy me some tiger cub quality time.

Anyway, for those that don't know the great tragedy that hit LA last week - we had four days of rain and she had to go to Plan B which was a specialty kids birthday party company called Giggles 'N Hugs *.

I had planned to go to yoga, rush home and shower then head off to the party and be there right on time at 2pm. Turns out party started at 1pm which left me 30 minutes to drive the 30 minute drive home, shower and then drive the 40 minutes to the venue which left me with a deficit of 1019 hours.** So we came to a mutually beneficial agreement that allowed neither of us to feel guilty. I offered up the gift I had bought her son for her to give him thus saving her the time of running off to the mall and I got a hall pass. Everybody wins! I need yoga more than I need pizza and I only know how to talk to cats. Not adults.

But being the good friend I am, I offered to help put together the party favor gift boxes. The theme was the movie Madagascar, so we had animal crackers, animal stickers, lollipops and toy animals. I put myself in charge of creating appropriate animal pairings for the boxes. Because 3 year olds notice things like that. I think I did an excellent job and should probably go into business creating animal pairings for kids birthday party gift boxes that have a Madagascar theme.

Selection of the potential animals - 3 to a box.  In a perfect world, they would all be exotic animals, however sometimes people accidentally buy dogs.  So, now everyone gets a dog and two exotics.  Honestly, I'm a little afraid for some of the dogs...

A Tiger and a Collie Dog and a...black and white animal.  I think it's a Tapir but I don't know what that is.  A party favor box*** for the person who guesses it correctly.  Photobomb - Level: Parrot and Camel.  German Shepherd is clearly on guard and looking in the wrong direction.

This is obviously one of those therapy dogs, trying to bring the zebra and Leopard closer together.  "can we all just start by looking each other in the eye?" Quite frankly, I don't blame the zebra for being a bit standoffish.  Friendly overtures in the past have resulted in being eaten.

This camel is called Raju.  When I was in India, I rode on a camel named Raju.  We rode through the desert and Raju dragged me through the only tree for miles.  It was prickly and had a snake hanging down from it.  Raju caused me to lose my dignity in front of a snake.  We didn't really get along.  He spat at me, I spat back.  Not to scale.

Sausage dog meets giraffe.  Sausage dog gives giraffe napoleon complex.  Sausage dog is apparently a giant sausage dog.

Feel like this is a movie yet to be made...my money's on the gorilla.

That's because I saw the fight.

Take that bitches...rawr.

This is like the scorpion and the turtle fable.  The turtle agrees to take the scorpion across the river despite severe misgivings about being stung half way across and both of them dying.  Due to the inherent nature of the scorpion, his misgivings are well founded.  Here, the anteater tries to talk the turtle out of it, but the turtle has low self-esteem so tries to please everyone and insists on helping out the large cat whose breed is unidentifiable due to him being made out of plastic.  I can't show you what happened - it's too distressing.  But surprise surprise, there was no river and the turtle had his throat ripped out by the cat and the anteater wants to go in a different party bag.

Actually - turns out it was a murder pact between these two and the anteater was using reverse psychology on the turtle. 

Panther and giant frog get to know each other.  Panther is wondering why the frog is so big given that the largest frog in the world, the Goliath frog  reaches a max of 3kg and 13 inches long.  Panther is sidling away as clearly this is a frog that has been eating toxic waste and has grown abnormally large and panther is smart enough to know that this can only end badly.  Panther requests a different party bag.  Panther is denied.  Panther does not make it through to the end of the party.  Child only receives two animals.

The fancy party favor gift boxes.

The party favor gift boxes for the kids we don't like. 

The party favor lollipop for the kid that wasn't even invited and was just passing through the mall.

*I keep wanting to call this Shits 'n Giggles which is clearly not right although I'm thinking with a bunch of kids running around, drinking soda and eating candy, it's probably not too far from the truth. Although back to front as pretty sure no one is giggling after the...well you know what I mean.
**Or thereabouts.  Did this in my head so might be a little off...
***And by party favor box, I mean nothing.