Star Wars Birthday Party
for our Boy’s Fifth Birthday Party

My wife once again put together an amazing theme with this Star Wars Birthday Party for our son’s fifth birthday! As always, she had months earlier gone to Birthday Express and ordered her birthday party supplies online long before our boy’s fifth birthday, letting them mature in storage from the prior July for his May birthday the following year.

For the Star Wars birthday party, she ordered the Birthday Express Star Wars Generation Deluxe Party Pack for eight. The pack included eight invitations, dinner plates, cups, forks, spoons and activity placemats. They also added sixteen napkins, a centerpiece, a foil balloon, eighteen latex balloons in three colors, crepe paper rolls in three colors, which she spent hours folding into great accordion style streamers, curling ribbons which she also used to decorate the cupcakes, and the pack rounds off nicely with birthday cake candles.

In addition, she ordered the amazingly awesome customizable Star Wars birthday banner, a Darth Vader poster which looked great with our black light, and a Darth Vader mask which our three year old daughter claimed ownership and carried the persona! She also ordered extra foil balloons and a miniature helium tank.

Unfortunately, the November prior to the party, my wife got into a terrible automobile accident while successfully rescuing our two year old daughter from a rolling minivan! The event sent her into a helicopter journey rushing her to the intensive treatment unit to try and save her kidney and ultimately her life. With just two hours to spare, the team was able to rescue her; a spiritual return of favor for an altruistic act.

But the next several months challenged our family with the hardships of raising three children and managing Mommy’s recovery.

Visiting her daily at the hospital reminded me of how torturous basic cable television can be. But in the middle of unpalatable reruns, she found solace in the continuous airings of all six Star Wars films which offered her positive and reinforcing philosophies and direction while facing a crippling darkness in her human experience.

The injury tested her will, and messages from Yoda insisted that she needed to unlearn what she has known, to, “Try Not. Do or do not. There is no try.” And at her angriest, lessons arose claiming, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

At home, she remained confined to her hospital bed as months of uncertainty over the removal of her nonfunctional kidney came and went. The removal would have meant additional months of recovery as well as more pain and depression. She continued her recovery with deep prayer, Catholic television and the support of her family. During one of the religious airings, the priest himself commented on how even Darth Vader was in the end revealed to have good in him, which she interpreted as a direct message on how even during the darkest of her dark moments, there was hope through it all.

In the end, she pulled through with a nonfunctional kidney and partially fractured spine, in time for our daughter’s Minnie Mouse third birthday party, our thirteen year old’s self portrait party and our son’s Star Wars birthday party!

From finding out she could keep her nonfunctioning kidney in February through our daughter’s birthday in March, our thirteen year old's birthday party in April and our boy’s fifth birthday party in May, positivity and support catapulted her healing into sharp zenith with high spirits and positive energy. The recovery put her back in Mommy mode and she destined to put together the best birthday parties for her children ever!

Now just ready to turn five, our boy had himself grown during the experience. This year, he helped Mommy make the birthday cupcakes which she credits him (and he really is a great chef, helping me make fantastic vegetable omelets on the weekends)!

But the Star Wars birthday party decorations were all her. Having been a visual display artist for a Swedish fashion retailer for over ten years before becoming a full time mom, setting up a visually stunning personal environment is her passion and one of her many talents.

She put all the pieces together form the Star Wars birthday party pack to fantastic celebration, and the party turned out to be a happy and momentous time for our son’s fifth birthday party, complete with the Star Wars theme song playing from the family Casio. Five has been a magical and wholly enjoyable time in our son’s life. He has grown to be such and sweet and intelligent boy, and I am very happy he has his mother as a participating and living part of his experience.

And I am incredibly proud of my wife for having saved our daughter’s life and celebrate her strength during a very difficult recovery. I believed and supported her when she shared her visions and turned to her faith to guide her healing, and to this day we honor and appreciate all forms of higher communication whenever we are fortunate enough to be presented with those gifts.

The decorations stayed in the family party room until the Halloween decorations came up in October, but I remember often times looking into the Darth Vader poster, a costume I once wore as a child, and couldn’t help but be reminded of a favorite Yoda quote,