A day before his actual birthday (Tuesday, 12 February) we got a phone call from a parent: Kekai had invited her son home from school the next day for a birthday party and she just wanted to speak to a parent before sending him. Yikes. Kids' bus doesn't get home until 5pm -- we couldn't pull that off on a school night. Luckily we were able to do damage control and got 5 kids orally invited on Tuesday, by Thursday we'd managed to get all parent's phone numbers and had spoken to the three families who could make it.
For his actual birthday we ordered a fancy cake from a Bangalore chocolate shop and celebrated at home with the four of us. We got one of those amazing pyrotechnic India birthday candles. Unlike mine, Kekai's squeaked Happy Birthday to You when it was supposed to (but we still had to cut the wires to quiet it). Kekai requested a suit (!?) for his birthday so Tim and I went and looked at suits, but in the end settled on an over-the-top dress shirt with matching tie (when is he ever going to wear a suit??)
Neal and Tanish were both able to come home on the bus. We had snacks at our flat then walked over to the mall. We played two rounds of bowling (Tim and I played one, the kids played two), then went across to Pizza Hut. Imagine that. We've never done a corporate birthday before. I remember when I was a kid, the coolest birthday you could ever have was a McDonald's birthday. Dee Kawaguchi had one and it was so awesome. The funny thing is, I can't remember if it was at the original McDonald's (the one near Henry O.) or the fancy new one (in the spanking new Waiakea Plaza; that one's now a social security office or something). The Henry O. McDonald's had these really cool (we thought) round tables made out of stones. Now of course it's all plastic and modern, but I swear they sold their tables to KTA -- you can eat your bento on one if you come out the deli-side door.
But anyway, the kids had a great time. We'll probably never do anything like this again -- how funny is it that we're living something closer to the American Dream life in India than we've ever experienced in the US?