Luau in December

The littlest pinks have December birthdays. We don't celebrate Christmas so the whole issue of December birthdays competing with Christmas is irrelevant. Chanukkah is a small holiday in the grand scheme of things so really, we're fine with the December birthday situation.

The thing is, children who have December birthdays typically have indoor birthday parties. In the last six years we've done Build a Bear Workshop twice, Habitot, Gymboree and a princess party where the princess came to the house and turned all the kids into royalty.

This year I had a luau in mind. This is the year that Thing 1 really got into swimming and this being California, kids learn to swim early and strong.

Yes, it's winter. But gosh darn it, we were going to swim! Fortunately, I found a local swim school with an indoor pool to rent. And that's where we spent Saturday afternoon -- throwing a Hawaiian-themed party for two nearly seven-year-olds.

It was one of my better ideas. Sweetening the deal was the fact that it was probably the coldest day of the year thus far. The kids had an absolute blast as was evidenced by the deafening amount of screaming. There were all these amazing pool toys the kids had never seen: logs, slides, large floating mats, animals. The swim school staff did a great job and everyone took a swim test before being let loose in the water. There were four lifeguards for the 24 kids and another staffer orchestrating check in, F&B, etc. The kids swam for an hour and a half then we did goldfish, Pirate's Booty, Swedish fish, juice boxes and Baskin Robbins ice cream cakes.

We kept with the theme for the favors by doing flip flops with Pez dispensers. I loved the parade of bathing suits, too. The kids have such perfect bodies without vanity or self-consciousness at this age. I'm a huge fan of seeing them in teenie weenie bikinis although our kids didn't seem to want to wear theirs on this particular day.

The swimming, coupled with an hour of vigorous indoor soccer that morning, had even Thing 2 into bed at a decent hour. In one of my less brilliant moves, we invited my four-year-old niece to spend the night before with us. She and Thing 2 only slept from 11:30p to 7a. I suspect that a repeat of this is not in our immediate future, as much fun as it was for all involved.

All that remains of the birthday party is a list of gifts for us to properly acknowledge, the aforementioned gifts, a trash can full of recycling and a bunch of really happy memories. Success!