Father's Daze

The second weekend in May should be a good time, weather-wise, to hold an outdoor birthday party — except in this part of the country.

Around here, there’s no guarantee that the weather will be good any time of the year — even the end of July.W

e found that out many years ago when we held one of Devon’s birthday parties in the city park.

Devon’s birthday was at the end of July, but the day we held her party the temperature was nearly half of what it normally would be. That didn’t stop her and her friends from going into the swimming pool — the theme was a pool party followed by hot dogs — but suffice it to say they were the only ones brave — or foolish — enough to take the plunge that day.

We wrapped Devon up in a sweatshirt, coat and blanket after she got out of the pool, but we still almost had to put her on the grill with the hot dogs to get her warmed up.

With that kind of history, we should have known we were pushing our luck when his parents scheduled Aiden’s second birthday party for the zoo in Green Bay on a Saturday afternoon, with hot dogs and brats in the park across the road.

Of course, Julia and Alex did hold his first birthday party outdoors in a park a year ago — and that was in April, closer to his birthday — and it turned out to be a nice, unseasonably warm day, perfect for a party.

But you don’t have to have a PhD in statistics and probability to know that expecting that to happen two years in a row is defying all kinds of odds and laws.

That may be why none of us were really all that surprised when the weather reports early in the week called for cold temperatures and even a chance of snow for the weekend. Still, we pressed on with the party.

There was snow in parts of the state the day before the party was scheduled, but it was only raining here, and the weather report was saying it would clear up by Saturday afternoon, so right after lunch Saturday my wife and I were on the road to Green Bay.

We were bringing along some of the essentials — like the buns, potato salad and the birthday cupcakes — but we arrived at the park a little early, so we headed to the store for a few things we’d forgotten to get, like a birthday card for the birthday boy.

It turned out to be a good thing, as we got a phone call from Alex asking us to pick up a few things they’d forgotten to bring with them — just some little things, like charcoal, plastic forks and a few other minor things like that.

While it wasn’t snowing — or even raining — when we got to the park, there had been enough precipitation that the ground was pretty spongy in a lot of areas. About the only one of the kids at the party who didn’t get muddy was Aiden, but then he had two parents and three grandparents making sure he didn’t get into the mud and the water — and it took just about all of us to make sure of that.

We got the fire going and the brats started, then left Alex to take care of that task while the rest of us took Aiden through the zoo.

While may been too cool a day for us to enjoy, it was cool enough that most of the animals were out and about while we went through the zoo — which might have been the only good thing about the weather.

The only animal that we didn’t see was the bear — maybe it was cold enough that he got confused and went back into hibernation.

I don’t want to say it was terribly cold, but it probably meant something that about the most active animals in the zoo were the penguins. The weather suited them, at least, and the few small piles of snow around probably made them feel right at home.

The monkeys also put on quite a show and Terry got several pictures of them that she included in her Facebook photo album of the party.

That prompted my sister Amy to write a comment under one of the pictures of the monkeys about how she could see the resemblance to Grandpa Emmitt. I can safely say she’s now my least favorite sister, but then again, she’s my only sister, so it’s somewhat of an empty retort.

We made it back to the park and finished off the brats and hot dogs, although we weren’t quite frozen enough that we ate them while sitting on the grill.

However, I’m thinking that we should look into holding Aiden’s third birthday party at Disney World. I think Orlando needs a blizzard in April.