Tag Archives: jet skis

Boating Birthday Party For Kids

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In the past, we’ve had kid parties at mini-golf  and other kid places like Chuck E Cheese’s.  This year we decided to try something different!

Boating Party Idea

This year we asked my son what kind of kid’s party he wanted and he said he wanted a Boating Birthday Party.  “Wow, that’s a great idea” I said, while thinking “the only problem is that we don’t own any boats”…

Yeah, we have friends that have both boats and jet skis, but I can’t really tell them, “Okay, my son wants a boating birthday party so I’m going to invite people you don’t know to use your boats and jet skis at this certain lake…, is that cool?“!  That certainly wouldn’t go over well with me, so I can imagine it would go over well with them either…

Luckily my son’s grandfather recently purchased jet skis and since he’s a great guy, he offered to bring over his jet skis and help out with the party.  Next, my wife called her good friend that has a nice newer shine boat and asked if she could bring her kids and come to the party.  The friend said she would do one better and bring their boat for everybody to use too.

 

Boating

So my son’s boating party had all of the necessary equipment lined up for use.  Since this is the first year trying this, we decided to keep the list of kids that he could invite to a minimum so that we could test the waters so to speak (no pun intended).  So my son picked four of his most solid friends, with such friends, we could have some party fumbles and they wouldn’t really mind.  So we had a great pilot test group of friends for our first boating birthday party.

Notes For The Next Boating Birthday Party

While we were successful at getting the equipment lined up, there were times when all the adults were socializing on the beach.  During this time the kids were bored and wanted beach toys to build castles.  Normally we have such toys, but both my wife and I forgot them this time.

Well, that’s a major mistake because the kids don’t want to listen to adults at a party, so I had to jumped in the car and went out searching for some beach toys for the party.

It took me 20 minutes to locate a store that carried the sand toys and then another 10 minutes to get back to the beach.  While not a party stopper, this was a major miss on our part and something that needs to be considered for any future boating party.

Boating Party Mishaps

No, we didn’t have any accidents or crashes!  But our friends with the boat had to leave early because they had to travel to Virginia that day for a small vacation!  So the kids didn’t get to go tubing in the boat much, but it was still fun for the short time that they were able to.  Big thanks to our friends for coming out and adding to the fun by bring their boat!  This wasn’t expected and was a great treat for the kids.

After our friends had gone, one of the jet skis mysteriously stopped working after we turned it off at the beach!  Oh no, now we were down to one jet ski!  The kids all took two additional turns, then we had to tow the broken jet ski back to the dock to be loaded back onto the trailer.

We were luck that the four friends that he asked to come didn’t complain and just made the most of the time they had out in the lake with the jet skis and boat!

Jet ski

Boating Party Conclusion

We had some rough moments, but overall, the friends had an awesome time (not of they had gone boating before).  Asked if they want to try it again next year, all enthusiastically said “YES”!!!

I think if we didn’t have such family and friends to have the party, we might have been able to rent the jet skis (and maybe even the boat for all I know).  While it might be expensive if you rent them for too long a period, it might not be that bad if you only use them or an hour or two.

I think it would be a blast to run the jet skis on the ocean someday.  Perhaps we’ll rent them when we are on vacation this year…

I’m happy my son and his friends had a great day, life is good!

MR

 

 

Sometimes Getting Exactly What You Want Isn't The Best Experience

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The experience was almost like this... relaxing...

Today, the weather forecast stated that althought the day was very cloudy, There was only a 30% chance of rain.  It was hot and humid, so logically even though it’s not sunny, it’s still a good way to cool off and have some fun with my son.

So I thought “hmmm, this is almost the middle of the week, we’ll go wave running early, beating the crowd (which should be less than typical since it looks like it might rain).”  I thought what a great idea!!!

Well, my idea worked a little too well.  Hardly anyone was out on the lake at all (I think I counted… maybe 5 boats).  It was eerie!  It kind of felt like the lake was closed and we were intruders that shouldn’t have been there.  With the clouds darkening the day, I expected a lot of bug to be over the lake, but luckily they weren’t!

So, as I claimed once we were in the water…  We owned the lake that day!  But you know what?  It wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be. 

The following are the Reasons that our time was less than optimal:

  • The lack of sunlight made it feel very strange!
  • The lake was so calm, there weren’t any waves to jump over and ride on.  This is half of the fun of wave running.
  • No people watching (albeit a brief encounter at best on the wave runners anyway, but still…).
  • Kind of lame experience, like singing in the shower… Nice but not like singing in front of other people (not that I can sing, blah).

It’s funny, how the almost total lack of people made wave running such a so so experience.  Surprisingly, a lot of things in life are similar to my experience with wave running and nobody being there.

Was it worth it?  Yeah, but it could have been better!

What do you think?  Have you planned something, then with the lack of background noise or other people, realized the experience wasn’t quite a good as with that noise or people?

-MR