Miss A having the time of her life!

We ventured bravely into that organized chaos known as Chuck E. Cheese this weekend to celebrate Miss A’s 5th birthday. The look on her face when we walked in was like a white haired grandmother who’d only dabbled in church basement bingo and bunko walking into the MGM Grand. She was blown away by the awesomeness of it all. I’ve mentioned this before, but we’ve never taken the girls to Chuck E. Cheese, although Miss C has been a few times with friends, and when I tell other parents this they look at me like I have a third glowing eyeball named Lady Gaga.

After the gift bag tissue was whisked away and our leftover pizza and chocolate cake was boxed up and the guests left, the four of us decided to stay until we’d spent our last gold Chuck E. coin because we are mad players like that. It was the like the Amazing Race to spend our coins. I Whac A Moled, rode in a jet ski race, and summoned my inner Jedi. Miss A was pretty content to go through the indoor playground maze over and over and over and periodically I would completely lose sight of her which is always comforting when one is in a room full of hundreds of kids but the security at Chuck E. Cheese is like Fort Knox. If Jack Bauer ever retires he could get a job there manning the super secret invisible ink hand stamping system at the door.

After an exhausting hour of video gaming we’d finally spent nearly all the coins. We walked up to the ticket dispenser as if it were our gateway to mecca. Miss C already had her eyes on several grand prizes that cost several thousands in tickets like a giant plush Chuck E. or a marshmallow shooter.

We got in line alongside a couple feeding tickets into the machine at an alarming rate. Clearly they were pros at this. And then I saw it. They had a grocery bag FULL of tickets. Thousands and thousands of tickets! There children were going to be set for life! Still, we were proud of our small stack of tickets. What were these people? Some kind of Chuck E. FREAKS? Had they been coming to Chuck E. Cheese every weekend for the 18 months? Did they need to undergo Chuck E. gamer rehab? I refused to look at them and their bag full of tickets, the ticket flaunters.

Finally the hubby threaded our last ticket into the machine and it spit out a claims ticket. We headed to the prize counter.

What did we have to show for our hour of intense gaming?

We left with a pack of Pop Rocks for each of the girls, a bracelet for Miss C, and a glow in the dark spinner for Miss A.

Obviously we were amateurs.

Hopefully we did not shame our children in the house of Chuck E.

As for the marshmallow shooter? I can probably find one for $4.99 on clearance at Big Lots.