Rush-struction Party

Trent is a great man and a wonderful husband, but no one could ever accuse him of leaving work at work.  He’s the master of bringing work home.  Every six months or so I’ll hear a really interesting work story, like a co-worker opening the door to his motel room and finding a dead body and a police investigation (true), but the other 363 days of the year our dinner conversation steers onto which subcontractors are falling behind and who hasn’t approved the most recent batch of change orders and what other companies are bidding the newest hospital.  I know more about construction than I ever wanted to know.  Rush loves construction too, so it was only natural to throw a construction party for his 3rd birthday.

There are some really cute ideas online for construction themed birthday parties. A lot of mothers do really adorable things with dump trucks and chocolate covered raisin rocks. I had to stop looking at other people’s beautifully blogged construction parties because I was feeling too smug.  Finally, a chance to use my construction knowledge, and there’s nothing cute about it.  It’s not cute to be forced into a discussion how many RFI’s the steel subcontractor submitted while we’re driving to the beach.  Now, finally, finally!, I had a way for construction to be fun! (Oh, and the paycheck and health insurance that the construction industry has provided our family for years has been nice as well.)

This was the easiest party ever, first of all because we have such helpful extended family who happily made guacamole and beans and queso and a birthday cake and helped with the kids and shopped for party supplies, and on and on with helpfulness.  And everything else was easy too.  We needed sand to fill in some swampy parts in our yard anyway.  Trent borrowed some cones from work, we bought a roll of caution tape (which I’m sure will come in handy in the future), and dug through our garage. Hmm, cute container filled with lemonade or Igloo jug filled with water? Igloo jug, let’s keep it real. We could put cokes in the cooler, or wait, here’s our wheelbarrow.  Let’s fill it with ice and stick the drinks there.

I’ve never seen such a serious bunch of 3 year olds. Some of them showed up with their own dump trucks, went straight to the sand pile, and didn’t take a break for the entire party. I think a lot of them even skipped the cake. Dirt work is important business for some kids.

The party was not without its cuteness though.  Trent’s sister Kim volunteered to make the cake and made the very coolest cake ever to grace a 3rd birthday party.  It’s the cake that keeps on giving too, with all that new equipment to play with.

I tried to use the equipment from the cake to teach my sister the difference between a bulldozer, a front-end loader, a backhoe, etc…I didn’t want her to teach her daughter that everything is a tractor (wrong) like my friend and  mother of two girls - you know who you are Elizabeth!

I’ve seen offices filled with blueprints when I’ve visited Trent at work and I know from his excessive work stories that blueprints are constantly being revised and recycled.  So I asked him to please bring a few home to use as tablecloths. 

Blueprints, where have you been all my life?!  As soon as I saw that big stack of paper enter our front door, my head started spinning.  Oh, the endless possibilities!  We rolled some up with crayons for party favors.  But how did I never think about getting blueprints from Trent before?  I have a giant to-do list in the kitchen right now on the back of a blueprint.  We have giant coloring sheet.  I know I’m going to be wrapping presents in the outdated plans for Carnegie High School. The “Welcome Home from Your First Semester of College Rush!” banner will probably be painted on the back of blueprints.

We still have a big pile of dirt in the yard covered in dump trucks.  We were outside this morning and we’ll be outside again this afternoon.  The construction party is never really over at our house.