Never leave a mom in charge of a treasure hunt

N's birthday party was this weekend, and the theme was Pirates (inspired by the themed packs at Costco, way cheaper and easier than buying everything individually at the party supply store). So after some help from the Pafo, , I had 4 games for the kids to play: dig for gold, cannon fight, , shark tag (the shark is it - with a special shark hat), and a treasure hunt, . One would think this would go quite smoothly and it did, for the most part.

10 minutes before the party was to begin I start hiding the treasure hunt clues should be easy right? I had written out clues and put the answers in parenthesis on the bottom so asAba was reading them he could direct the kids where to go. I cut the clues apart, grabbed some string and went about hiding them, then we hit a big old string of snafoos.

N and neighbor boy came home and wanted to watch me hide the clues, well that is no good, and after me telling them 3 times to go inside and Aba finally coming and escorting them in I could begin hiding.

5 minutes to party time. So I read the clue " All ships have one of these!" (Deck), and promptly tie a string around the clue and tie it to the deck, onto the next clue " A tree of needles" (pine tree), run over to the pine tree and tie it on ( do you see the problem here? I didn't) and continue with the next 2 when finally a light bulb goes off in my head, I am hiding the clues where they are supposed to be found, not where the kids are led to. The deck clue does not go one the deck, but rather the step before the deck.

2 minutes to party time and now I am running around trying to untie clues well knotted against the Colorado winds so they would not blow away! Great, I have to start over, and now I have no idea what order the clues were supposed to be in, well except for the first and last.

Kids are now arriving, I am running around confused, and Aba is laughing. Leave it to me to completely mess up something as simple as a treasure hunt! So I start again, get one clue done and J and his mom arrives, Thankfully between the 2 of us we get it done, with out too many more mess ups. and it only took 10 more minutes! If J's mom hadn't arrived I am pretty sure I would have been there for at least another 30 minutes.

I guess it is true what they say motherhood makes you loose brain cells, next time I'll fill the water balloons and Aba can hide the clues!