How To Stand Up A Nine Year Old

!. Call their parents and invite them to a party where they are going to be the only guest.

2. Tell the parents the date but not the time.

3. Cancel the party without letting them know.

4. Turn your phone off so it goes straight to voice mail so they are left guessing all day long.


A few weeks ago one of the parents of Hazel's friends called to tell us that their daughter wanted to have a build-a-bear birthday party. They told her she could only invite one friend and she wanted to invite Hazel.

Now, I have never been a huge fan of expensive birthday parties, and even with just one friend I KNEW that this would be a pricey thing for this family. After the phone call Shane and I discussed paying half of whatever Hazel got, because this family is not well off at all. I mean, we're not well off either, but we can pay half of a build-a-bear.

Here's what I don't know... did they decide it would be too expensive? Possibly. Did the little girl change her mind and want to invite a different friend? Possibly.

Well, Hazel has been having a hard time focusing at school and has been put on a daily tracker, where her teacher rates how she did at different times of the day. It's on a scale of 0-4 and when she got her first track sheet she had all zeros and ones, so we told her if she improved we would let her go to this party.

It was supposed to happen yesterday. Hazel was up at her grandparents when we remembered and her grandma brought her back to our house so she could go to this party.

It never happened.

I wish I could let the mom know that it really isn' t that big of deal. I wish she would have told us that they had a change of plans and that it wasn't going to happen. I can understand all that, and I think we are pretty rational people. Then I can explain to Hazel why it got cancelled. As it is I am left wishing we had forgotten and let her spend more time with her grandparents.