Boys and their Birthday Parties

My boy will be turning 7 in two weeks. He's been bugging me for a party that will allow him to invite his entire first grade class. Well, his idea for the party is Chuck E. Cheese. I'm sure most of you have been to one of these (or one similar). Personally, I'm not a Chuck E. fan. Party saturdays are very noisy, very hectic, and the kids don't even play together, just around each other. Personally, I'd rather see them do something else.

So, in the intent of fairness, I priced out lots of different places in the area that would allow us to host the party he wants. Unfortunately, only one other place (besides the local outdoor park pavilion) come up as reasonably affordable. I don't want an outdoor party because you can't predict the weather in November. So that ruled out a pavilion near a playground.

I checked local restaurants (hubby and I think he's a bit too old for a McDs party) and found a great one; if I wanted to pay a minimum of $300. Now it covers everything.. food, goodie bags, cake, etc, for 20 kids, is at a local airport so the kids can watch the planes (the restaurant is actually directly next to a runway) and is near a playground so that if the weather is good they can go play. But $300? I don't think so. For those in the area, the restaurant is the Downwind at Peachtree-DeKalb airport.

The local bowling alley has cosmic bowling for 2 hours for $14.99/kid which includes food, drinks, shoes, alleys, etc. Not too bad, about the same as the restaurant only no minimum. My son isn't interested.

I mentioned other options to my son (including mini-golf) and they were vetoed before I had a chance to check cost. I thought I'd done well by finding Jumping Jamboree which is maybe 2 miles from our house which has great rates. If more kids show up unexpectedly, they'll just work in a $10/kid charge at the time. Which is good when your child goes to a school where half speak spanish and not all of the parents understand english. (ie: not so many RSVPs) I had hoped to take him over there last night to let him look at it and he vetoed it before thinking about it.

So, now I've had to give him the bad news.. it's home or the jamboree. Invitations need to go out by end of week to give everyone two week notice. This is big when your birthday is the saturday before Thanksgiving.

So are all boys turning 7 so stubborn?