Zilker Park on a Saturday afternoon in April is usually a beautiful mess of kite flyers and frisbee-chasing dogs, but on April 12, 2025, it was ground zero for the most ambitious fairy-themed second birthday party Austin had ever seen. My niece Lily was turning two, and as the designated “cool aunt” with a mild…
My first attempt at a birthday party was a crime scene of deflated rubber and a crying seven-year-old. It was April 12, 2022, and I thought I could outsmart the humidity of an Atlanta spring by inflating fifty pokemon balloons for kids in my garage the night before. By 10:00 AM the next morning, the…
My twins, Leo and Maya, turned three last April, and I refused to let the Chicago drizzle dampen our “Wild Three” bash. I spent weeks scouring the dollar aisles for a jungle party crown set that didn’t look like literal trash. Most cheap sets I found online were thin as tissue paper. One sneeze from…
My first attempt at a backyard hoedown in 2022 ended with three crying toddlers and a very confused golden retriever wearing a bandana as a diaper. I thought I could just throw some orange streamers over the fence and call it a day. I was wrong. The humidity in Atlanta turned that cheap crepe paper…
I stood in the middle of my kitchen on a rainy Tuesday morning with three kids screaming for pancakes and a budget that wouldn’t even cover a fancy brunch, let alone a Pinterest-perfect birthday party for Maya. Maya was turning eight. Eight is a big deal in our house. It’s that bridge between “little kid”…
I stood in my kitchen in Kirkwood, Atlanta, sweating over a store-bought sheet cake that looked like it had been through a prehistoric extinction event. My son, Leo, was turning twelve on June 14, 2025, and I had promised him a party that didn’t feel like a toddler’s playdate. Twelve is a weird age. They…
Last February, I stood in the middle of my Houston classroom with a leaf blower in one hand and a bag of iridescent snowflake cutouts in the other, feeling like a very tired Elsa who had given up on her singing career. It was 82 degrees outside because Texas winters are a joke, but inside…
My kitchen smelled like burnt rubber and industrial-strength adhesive on the morning of August 12, 2025. I was standing over a pile of appliance boxes I’d scavenged from the recycling bin behind the Best Buy on Ponce de Leon, trying to turn them into something that didn’t look like trash. My son Leo was turning…
My daughter Chloe turned four last June 14th, and if you saw the state of my kitchen after the “Great Under-the-Sea Extravaganza,” you would think a literal tidal wave hit Denver. I spent three weeks obsessing over the structural integrity of 3-ply paper. Call me a nerd, but as a guy who spends his days…
Twenty-two four-year-olds in a humid Houston park on a Saturday morning is exactly as chaotic as you are imagining right now. My nephew Leo turned four on May 12 last year, and since I am the “party aunt” who also happens to teach second grade, I was drafted into service for the “Fin-tastic Four” celebration….
