And Now He’s Nine - Zoo/Pirate Birthday Party Revisited

We had our oldest son’s birthday party this past weekend, and it was a huge success. This year we decided to have the party at our local zoo. It’s actually more of a community nature trail with rehabilitated animals, but it’s a very cool place and the price was definitely right… $75 got us a nice room for the party, an hour long guided tour of the animal exhibits that included feeding a variety of critters (including a couple of deer, bears, and an alligator), a t-shirt for the birthday boy, and they even cleaned up for us afterward (although we didn’t really make a mess).

Given our son’s current interests (aside from animals, of course), the party had a pirate theme. The party favors were little skull candle holders from the dollar store that were filled with candy, as well as toy telescopes. Rather than planning a bunch of games as we’ve done in the past, we let the kids run wild and have fun chasing each other outside the building that housed the party. We then went on the feeding tour.

After that, we returned to the party room for cake and ice cream. My genius wife baked cupcakes and bought ice cream cups, so all we had to do was hand out the goodies — no cutting, no scooping, no nothing.

We’re now the proud parents of a nine year old. All in all it was a very fun and relaxing party, and we’d do it again in a heartbeat. And to top it all off, our son got everything that he needs to for a pirate Halloween costume, so we actually ended up killing to birds with one stone!