Several days ago, Brynja and Petra came to me pitching the idea of a pizza party. They’d seen it on Regular Show, and had worked out all the details, even presenting me with a checklist outlining the vital elements. Of course, they have no real-life experience whatsoever with pizza parties, and I agreed that it was well past time to address that lack.

We decided late in the week that Saturday would be the day, and yesterday afternoon I sent Olof to the grocery store with a list copied almost directly from the official checklist. He came home with six (small, frozen) pizzas and two large bottles of pop (I’m trying to train that word “soda” out of them), as well as ice cream, candy, and balloons. While he was gone, the kids and I got to work on decorations, printing out and coloring various pictures of pizza slices, which they carefully hanged around the kitchen and living room.

When dinnertime finally arrived, we cranked up the tunes (Pink’s “So What” was in heavy rotation) and I got busy with the pizzas. After we’d all eaten our fill, we turned our attention to the games part of the program, which consisted entirely of a few raucous rounds of “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” Soon enough we moved on to ice cream and candy, then moved downstairs for some TV before sending the lot of them off to bed. They talked about it all day today, already planning the next one, so it looks like we may have a family tradition in the works.

Here’s the mastermind behind the whole affair, Brynja the Pizza King: