When I started researching party venues for Luke’s 5th birthday party, it made me want to punch every business owner in the kidneys for how much they charged for these suckers.

Literally, in the kidneys.

$400 for 90 minutes to use your precious party room and sip on watered down lemonade for only 10 kids (when you know that’s just not enough) while they run or jump in your warehouse because I can’t do anything outside cuz my kids born in the middle of winter? $20 for every extra kid (%$(#*$#!#$)? $10 more if you want to feed them pizza they take 1.75 bites out of (HARD NO)? Taking out a small loan for a 5 year olds party doesn’t seem like something Dave Ramsey would be on board with. WTF WORLD. WHY ISN’T THIS A PART OF THE TRUMP TAX PLAN?? Can we get a child birthday party deduction in 2018 puhlease? Woof. Just woof.

Add on the fact that Luke’s class this year is a whopper of 19 kids…15 which are boys. I know…let’s take a moment and pray for those sweet teachers…………………………………………………………………..keep going, they need it………………………………………………………………………………….lil more………………………………………..and that’s good. So, when I started adding numbers of school friends, plus non school friends, and add the ridiculous cost per head for a party…I couldn’t deal. JUST COULDN’T DEAL.

Instead, I batted my eyelashes and used my growing pregnant belly for sympathy and asked if Luke’s birthday twin bestie wanted to go halfsies on a party for our two soon to be high fivers. You can’t say no to a pregnant person as long as they’re not asking you for lines of white powder or to go sky diving or something. She agreed, shes’s my birthday party guardian angel.

We convinced them that bowling was the greatest thing to ever be created and that if they didn’t have a bowling party life would cease to bring joy to them. It’s not really a lie, all those hours of watching episodes of Roseanne taught me that the bowling lane was where comedic moments came to thrive. The one where Roseanne just chucks it blindly down the lane??? Anyone but me getting this? Nope. Aight. That’s cool.

We dangled the beautiful aspects such as a chance to run in a strangers shoes, CUPCAKES, balloons, competition amongst friends, giant heavy balls to throw, and the chance to lose their fingers or noses in the ball delivery apparatus (does this have a name?!). THEY BOUGHT IT.

In the end, we had 28 kids under the age of 5 bowling across 6 lanes with all the adults present necessary to insure no child went running down the lanes (like mine did a few years ago and I had to run and catch them and promptly fell on top of them…good times), no fingers were lost, and no one ended up stuck in the claw arcade game. WE TOOK OVAH THAT BOWLING ALLEY YO.

Emma bowled maybe 3 times and spent the rest of the time trying to sneak the Rapunzel figurines off Paige’s cake or steal her pink balloons cuz any princess themed party is “for Emma”…tough life lessons are coming hard and fast for this one. Luke had a great time, bowled his lil heart out, celebrated with his buds and now can’t wait for the actual day when he can claim to be FIVE YEARS OLD.

He’s already started talking about what he’s going to do for his 6th birthday party…it would be frowned upon to start a gofundme for that right? Yea? Just a thought, I had…it passed quickly.

Here’s a snippet, where Luke has that “I’m so stoked it’s my parttayyyy, but really kinda embarrassed and also just really wanna blow these candles out so sing faster” look on his face that we all get…