Maëva's 12th Birthday Party

Maëva had wanted to have a slumber party. However, as the only date she and her best friends were available was Wednesday, July 26th, and she was scheduled to have her second pre-molar extracted Thursday afternoon, I said she needed to get a proper night's sleep. The compromise we came to was to have an all-day party instead, complete with a ropes course activity and a restaurant meal.

Things did not go exactly as planned. When we arrived at the adventure park in Auriol, it was closed. The Prefecture had closed it due to fire danger, I think. It was quite windy here the first part of the week. They'd called me the night before, but my phone hadn't notified me about the voice mail message, so I'd missed it. We decided to go to a different park in Le Castellet after lunch. In the meantime, we went home and the girls played Sorry while I set up an Egyptian-themed escape game downstairs for later.

Lunch was at Memphis Coffee, which Maëva says is her favorite restaurant. She had a kids meal with a hot dog, fries and churros.

After lunch, we drove on to Le Royaume des Arbres near the race track in Le Castellet. It's much bigger than the ropes course we're used to in Cassis, so there was quite a lot to do. We spent the afternoon there from 2pm until nearly 6. Maëva is a real monkey in the trees. She's the one who did the most courses, with me faithfully trailing after her at the end, when everybody else had thrown in the towel. Sylvain stayed on solid ground, taking photos and transporting our water stores.

Unfortunately, I got distracted crossing a footbridge on the first course (pink) we did and lost my footing and fell. I scraped up both shins and bruised my upper left arm where I came down hard on the wire rope. However, I managed to haul myself up, keep going, and to stick it out until the end. Luckily, I'd thought to bring a first aid kit (thinking some of the kids might need it . . . ha ha).

We didn't get back home until 6:30pm, so I called the parents and pushed pickup back from 7 to 7:30. The girls didn't get to go in the pool, but they had cake (lemon with coconut cream, but not made into a flamingo shape or frosted as planned), did presents, and then rushed through the escape game, only using 43 of the allotted 60 minutes. All five of them made it out of King Tut's tomb alive and well.

At the end of the day, Maëva remarked that it has not been the party she'd been expecting. That's true. We had to adapt. However, I think she still had fun and managed to make the most of things.