Balloons 101

It's an ugly job but someone has to do it. Getting the balloons blown up for the birthday party. We have gone the route of renting the helium tank and blowing up 12,000 balloons, it seemed like. A word to the wise all the small kids hated the shriek of the helium coming out of the canister. Now that we are on our 5th party we have streamlined our routine a bit.
Working Mom just bought 1 package of themed mylar baloons (slight prick of conscience that they might be bad for the ecology?). To get the Birthday Girl out of the house while the parents set up the picnic tables at the park I, A Woman of a Certaine Age was sent to the market to have the balloons filled. Birthday girl swooned over the large My little pony balloon. She only had eyes for it. I tied it securely to her wrist and clipped it to her skirt with fear it might float off. She walked it to the car while I carried the other 5 of smaller sizes.
I put it in the back seat and told her to get into her car seat. Somehow the silver My Little Pony Balloon loomed large and looked like a silver shark jerking back and forth against the carseat and the back window. Birthday girl screamed and refused to get in.
There I was one hand filled with floating hearts a screaming little girl and really the strange silver thing lurching in the back seat it was really scary. So what would any Nana do? I pulled out the shark, held it above the car roof where the birthdaygirl could not see it and she climbed in. I clicked her seatbealt and slid the shark who metamorphised back to a sickingly sweet pony in the front seat. The head rest shielded it from the Birthday Girl's view. PHEW. The little heart ballons rested happily next to her.

The Party began, people played, sandwiches were eaten.

And then tragedy struck. One sweet little boy thought that Big MLP balloon was the pinata and he took a swipe at it. Up it floated. Suddenly fifteen little girls were screaming and he looked traumatized. For awhile the balloon hovered under the branch of a pine tree. But slowly tantalizingly it slid out and up to the big blue sky. I started calling, "Bye My Little Poney have a nice flight, Bye!" You know they have wings right so they must want to fly. Working Mom and Dad were still monitoring the play structure so I sent a friend to get them. Dad quickly got this picture of it's way up to the clouds. See the tiny silver dot above the third pine tree? Small girls were still screaming...

 So what did clever Working Mom the school teacher do? She announced "Pinata Time". That solved that.

 Note to party throwers passing out flowered celophane candy bags keep those in line busy until it is their turn. I was a little weirded out when one mother pulled her two children over out of the line to the side and announced "My children don't like to hit things." What Pinata's are now acts of violence???
                                   Well almost everyone agreed on cake. (I will not even comment on the parents who think sugar is a gateway drug to heroin.)

                                And cake fixed everything! Naptime for all!
A Woman of a Certaine age.

 I asked Working Mom if she wanted to blog and she said, "Are you kidding? We have to do thank you notes." Many families now send photo cards of their child at the party with a printed "Thank you, Child's name" like Christmas cards... Working Mom thinks that is cheating... It's the Puritan work ethic in her heritage coming out.