Maybe you’ve had a birthday party fail or two before.
Let’s be honest with a show of hands here…raise your hand if it can be challenging navigating birthday parties for your children to attend.
Don’t misunderstand…we’re all crazy excited, and doin’ our happy dance our kids were invited! I find it difficult when my kids don’t want to stand out by being “different” by eating something else, and I just want my kids to eat safely.
A side note — I do have to brag about my family and friends, though. They are an awesome group of ladies who love my kids. They’re super easy to talk to about this. Sometimes they grab food from a safe bakery for us, or make the safe food, and sometimes it’s just best for everyone if I send food to parties. So thanks friends and family for working with me.
On the day of this story, though…it could of gone great, or ugly, really ugly.
My 8-year-old daughter had been invited to a super fun themed birthday party. A swim party! And you know how excited 8-year-old girls get for swim parties! All I needed to take for food was a pizza and brownies. Not a biggie, right?
Que the side note…my husband and I had just returned from our first “adults-only vaca” in four years, and I was still livin’ the crazy train of a different time zone…which equals little sleep.
I tried to plan ahead and bought brownies earlier in the day. Then, that afternoon, we were cleaning house for about 20 teenagers to come over for youth group that night. I’d just finished baking and frosting pumpkin cookies and started simmering apple cider in the Crockpot for them, too.
Before I knew it we needed to leave for the party and THEN I remembered the pizza. Making a pizza had just accidentally slipped my mind. Mistake…big mistake, friends.
Talk about a horrible feeling.
There are no words to describe the feeling I had in my stomach for my girl…I was already picturing her sitting there watching the other girls eat pizza while she ate crumbs from some nasty stale crackers that had been left in the pantry for the past month. And guys, my girl would’ve played it off well; she always does. She would’ve went right along with it and had a smile on her face. Still, I didn’t want that to happen.
I really had nothing fabulous to grab from the pantry. Remember, I was still riding the lack of sleep crazy train and hadn’t been to the store much. So, I did my best to make chips sound crazy exciting.
That’s correct — a Ziploc bag of chips, and we ran out the door. And yes, I did profusely beg for forgiveness.
I just couldn’t let it go down like that.
I know you wouldn’t either. I was determined there had to be a solution.
I wasn’t going to stop praying or problem solving until I had a solution.
As we drove to pick up one of Ava’s friends for the party, I was asking God to help me think of a pizza restaurant I could pull into on the way and grab some pizza. Now those of you reading this with food allergies know this is a difficult and daunting task! Gluten and dairy free restaurant options are not easy to come by, let alone quick. Like picture what zero, zip, zilch, or nada looks like… at least for our town.
We happened to arrive at the birthday party about 20 minutes early (woozers that never happens #thankyouJesus!). So, I surprised the girls and kept driving.
And then it happened…my light bulb moment.
The solution….
I pulled over and phoned Your Pie pizza which was 5 minutes away. I placed the pizza order. In 20 minutes we’d picked up the pizza, and I was dropping both girls off at the birthday party.
Ava had brownies and PIZZA in hand! Her smile, oh my, her smile was so thankful and excited.
A true hallelujah moment for this mom.
Hopefully something like this doesn’t happen again. But chances are at some point something likely will. May you and I both remember to problem solve through our options and opportunities to turn a possible fail into a treasured success.
Has something like this happened to you? Please let me know I’m not the only one out there having these moments! Share your story in the comments!