Laser Tag & Go-Kart B-day Parties

This weekend, Merrit was invited to go to two different birthday parties for boys in his class whose birthdays fell over the summer. On Friday night, we attended a laser tag birthday party for a friend named Chris. Shirts vs. Skins + About 15 seven- and eight-year-old boys + An enclosed space = Complete and utter mayhem, is all I can say. Picture, if you will, two hours of this:

The Skins figure out strategy.

You KNOW Ollie had to get in on that action. He had his shirt off in about, oh, four seconds.

The next afternoon, we were invited to a party for Merrit's friend and classmate, Sam. His party had a go-kart track set up inside a community center gymnasium. Amazingly, even though only five kids could drive at any time, the other boys would all stand patiently in a line, watch, and wait their turn. I couldn't believe that...

Now that we've been to two different English birthday parties, we learned a couple of traditions:

• The gifts aren't opened at the party. I quite like this actually. Saves time, jealousy, and awkwardness.
• The cake isn't eaten at the party. Individual slices are wrapped in napkins and sent home in party bags with other little goodies...candies, books, pencils, popcorn, etc.