Picnic at Stoney Creek

After weeks of deliberations and careful planning and re-planning, we hosted the birthday party for Sidharth at Stony Creek Metro Park, a beautiful park not too far from our house. On his birthday Sidharth woke up to the sight of his over zealous parents recite a horrendous off-key rendition of ‘Happy Birthday to you’, and his mood was all downhill thereafter. We had invited about 15 of our close friends with their families for the picnic. If one were to judge by the vagaries of the weather on Saturday, it seemed like Sunday was destined to be a damp squib like the preceding day. But luckily the weather gods smiled down upon us and off we went to Stony Creek.

Since we had sent the invitations out for 10:00 AM, propriety mandated that we showed up at the appropriate time. Like everything else that gets stretched in our culture, the invitees started trickling in at 11:30 AM. But this allowed us plenty of time to set things up, get the grill going and the kebabs heated before the guests showed up. Oh, I forgot all about the delectable menu for this outing. We had turkey kebabs, idli Manchurian, corn on the cob, chips and fruits with the obligatory chips, nachos and salsa for starters and noodles, undhiya/puris, tomato rice and cucumber salad for lunch. Seemz was helped in ample measures by our friends, Nita, Radhika, Prathibha and Arthi in the cooking and organizing department. Dessert was supposed to be mixed fruits with ice cream and cake.

So after gorging ourselves on the starters we headed to the lake with the kids, inflatable tubes and a full stomachs in tow. The kids took to the water whole heartedly followed by the dads, but the moms needed some coxing to get wet. Seemz was busy taking care of the food etc. and thus I was left with a none-too-happy child to babysit on my hands. Sidharth was OK for the most part, but she he did not eat well in the morning he was still quite grumpy. Prabhakar and me gave Anshul the heave-ho sending him headlong into water while Jayant and Vinod splashed around with their kids. Nita, Mamta, Arthi, and Audrey jumped into the water as well, taking in the near perfect temperature of the lake and the sparse crowds at the lake that day. Lot of splashing and plenty of machinations to drag the uninitiated ensued, but were met with limited success. Radhika would sprint at the sight of anybody coming out of the water, fearing that she might get dragged in and subsequently drenched. Bobby and Sidharth showed up at the beach, only to disappear soon afterwards to play volleyball with the boys. Though I wanted to join the guys for volleyball, I got vetoed by the missus in favor of keeping the kid from swimming by himself in the lake. Priorities!!!

Well lunch ensued soon thereafter, followed by a game of touch football, which was threatening to take took a menacing turn when some of us got overtly physical. But thanks to Bobby’s buttery fingers and John’s presence of mind we manage to rout our opponents and clinch the game. The birthday cake was cut by Sidharth and Seemz, in conformance with age old “smash it” traditions, deposited a sizeable portion of the cake and its icing on my face. Papa Joe’s an organic grocer next to our house was where we got this excellent raspberry cake and I taste morsels of this heavenly confectionary delight every day, thanks to the leftovers from the birthday. Rahul showed up soon thereafter, after completing his 175 mile bicycle race for MS from Detroit to Lansing and back. After some good natured ribbing and felicitations for Rahul we decided to call it a day at about 5:00 PM in the evening. A long day indeed and by the time we hit the sack it was directly to snooze land. We think that most of us had a good time and we shall try and make this an annual feature for Sidharths birthday. All those weeks of planning were well worth it because most kids, including Sidharth had a blast, and it would not have been possible with help from our friends here. Most adults, too, had a good time. We will cherish memories of this wonderful day for a long time to come.