Laine is 12! Without sounding like an old person, Laine is turning into a wonderful young woman. She is smart, funny, witty, kind, sarcastic, responsible, and many other adjectives. We’ve lucked out with having amazing kiddos, all five of them. Not that I’m biased of anything. Laine is top notch and we are proud of all the things she accomplishes, and the person she is becoming.
Laine kicked off her 12th year with a celebration at home and a party a few weeks later. One of her buddies was in Japan for the month of July—we postponed her party to August so her buddy could attend. She’s still upset that the home cake celebration didn’t include all the siblings. I forget why and she’s right, and we’ll make it up to her. We’re in the midst of birthday season, with holiday season around the corner. We told her on her half-birthday—January 19—we’ll do it up with a cake and all the siblings!
At home.
Last year we went all out and she got an iPad with an Apple Pencil. This year, to set expectations lower, we told her in advance it wasn’t going to be on par with last year. Not that would complain, she’s a good kid like that. With the kids getting older, it’s easier for them to send me their want list and I can buy from there. And that’s what Laine did. She had a few things on there, like a smoothy maker, oodles of candy, storage containers for her oodles of candy (she has her own basket in the pantry already and she wanted to organize the thing), and a few other small things that I can’t remember over two months later. She was happy with all the things.
At K1 Speed.
This year she wanted a small party at K1 Speed, an indoor go-karting place in Redmond. Brian used to race there back in the day. His hobby is finding new hobbies, and his hobby back then was go-karting. He still has races left on his account, haha.
We planned the party for a Sunday morning. In all the years of planning kid parties, this was was not my favorite process. I set up the party online and then heard from a guy in Irvine. He was great and helpful, but it was minimal contact from when I originally set up the party. So old school also; I had to manually (or handwrite?!) fill out a form with my credit card information for the deposit, and scan it to email back to him (I took a picture, it worked). Then crickets. I set up the party on July 3. The party was August 12. I was worried it didn’t actually get set up. Most places contact you a week before the party to confirm all the things. Crickets still. I ended up emailing him on the 10th to make sure we were all set. He said we were. I was still not totally sure. I’m a worrywart though.
K1 Speed opens at 10am on Sundays. We got there about 9:45am and there were already people waiting outside. They are not hurting for business! The party started at 10:30am with a 10:10am check in, to make sure all waivers were signed and there would be enough time to go over the rules. As we were checking in, some of the people who had been waiting out front were turned away. Crazy. They were that busy. We had a party room, thankfully, and set up in the space. Laine’s friends arrived and were given the rundown of rules and fitted with helmets, and set up in go-karts.
They had two races. A qualifying race (everyone qualified) and then a final race, with about a 20 minute break between the two. It worked well. They raced, then they gamed in the party area. There are arcade games in the space we reserved, because we paid for the go-karting and arcade party. They raced again, followed by pizza and cupcakes. And more gaming.
It felt like a quick two-hour party, and all the kiddos seemed ot enjoy themselves. Especially the birthday girl, who placed third in the race. Go, Laine! And of course a first place Maive even though she didn’t race. She’s always put first place by her siblings!
The first birthday of the season, check! A successful one at that. Four more to go (technically two more to go at this point, since it’s already late September).
jumpingraccoons.com 