Life B.A.: The Man Party

Once there was a man party. And it was epic. Seriously legendary.

I have been determined for a long time to give Eric a good present/surprise/party for his final graduation. The problem is that I am not very good at pulling off surprises, buying good gifts, etc. It is kind of ironic because Eric is the master surprise puller-offer. (Like when he proposed, for instance.) And he always gets me superb gifts. 

I don't fail for lack of trying. If only my wishing and effort and good intentions could ensure a great gift. But I accidentally leave a paper with incriminating information laying around and the surprise is ruined and the RC airplane breaks shortly out of the box and the aquarium wave maker short circuits on itself and blows up and, well... you get the picture. But, I was bound and determined that I would pull off something worthy off the huge accomplishment of graduating. And the stars aligned (read: the Lord is merciful) and it finally happened.

Over the last few years, we went through many versions of what the awesome reward should be: a sweet new gun, a cruise, scuba certification classes, a ginormous aquarium, a trip, etc, etc. As the time drew near, I was very seriously investigating cruises and weekend trips in surrounding states for a surprise graduation trip. Unfortunately all my painstaking efforts at stealth were in vain. One day I carelessly left a paper with hotel information laying in the printer. Eric got home and started working on homework and found the paper later that night. I hadn't made any final plans (and actually nothing was really coming together), but the surprise was ruined. But it turned out to actually be the best thing that could have happened. :) That week we talked some more about what would be a really great celebration for graduation and Eric said, "You know, I really just want to get together with my buds and network it up like we used to before people moved away." (That is code for playing "Call of Duty: Zombies" [not sure what that's really called...] with his brother(s)/in-laws/family.) We ran with that idea and came up with "Eric's Man Party" - the man party to end all man parties. And it turned out to be a raging success!

It was set to commence on Friday after convocation and went something like this:

6:00pm: Laser Tag

7:30pm: Dinner (I had grand plans of making something for them and leaving it in the crockpot - no girls allowed, you know- but it turns out that packing and cleaning take FOREVER, so they just grabbed Del Taco on the way home.)

8:00pm: Shooting Zombies into the wee hours of the morning. (which turned out to be 4 in the morning for some craz..er... dedicated souls)

Saturday:

Sleep in then stir and grab breakfast and play some more zombies

12:00pm: Basketball at the Rec Center

2:00pm: Lunch

2:30pm: More zombies!

6:00pm: Dinner

7:00pm: Go see "Wrath of the Titans"

9:00pm: Shoot Zombies until Midnight (when the girls and I returned to comandeer the house and I cleaned a little more)

Because of the insanity of the move, the party was slightly more abbreviated than planned, but it still turned out great! We found out we were moving about a week and a half before the party was scheduled to take place. Plane tickets had been bought and there was no way we were turning back. The truck was packed and the apartment was empty, but the guys were all great sports and hauled down lawn furniture from our landlords to sit on, brought sleeping bags to sleep in, showered at the Rec center, and helped clean up afterwards. :) 

I actually was able to be a fly on the wall for most of Friday's festivities because there was still so much cleaning to be done and I stayed to work on it. It was really fun to hear how much all the guys were enjoying themselves. They were in HEAVEN and it kept me smiling and laughing to myself in spite of the fact that I had been cleaning for 7 hours straight. :) I heard things like, "Yeah-hah!!!", "This is so sweet!", and several "Dude!! This is so sick!" shouted out in pure giddy glee. (That was around the time they got all 4 Playstations hooked up to play together. Oh the zombie killing potential. It was pretty great, I'm told.)

The Man Party by the numbers:

755 - number of miles the farthest away person traveled to come

100 - the number of dollars it takes to feed a bunch of grown men at two days worth of partying (at first grossly under-estimated by me. I had to go back to the store for more half way through.)

18 -  hours of zombie shooting (approximately)

12 -  IBC Root Beers consumed

9 -  number of men at the Man Party

4- the number of Playstations "networked up" at once

1- VERY happy graduate! 

The set up on the right side

The set up on the left side (that's a projector someone brought)

Check out their faces - can you tell how intense it was? That was another thing that had me chuckling. It was for. reals. You would have thought the zombies were right outside our door. They were very focused. Silly boys. :) We love them.

The crew minus Eric (from left): BIL Tom (came from Arizona), Tom's brother Mike (came from Idaho), Tom's friend Big Will (came from St. George), Eric's dad, brother Andrew, friend Shane, BIL Ryan, BIL Rob.

Thanks to all who came! (And all those who sacrificed their husbands for the weekend.) It was the perfect reward for all those years of hard work!