a peek inside the fishbowl

1 | Roz

June 18th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

Wow, that looks like so much fun!

Do you always organize a street party for the kids, and how do you get the firefighters there?

2 | andrea

June 18th, 2007 at 2:06 pm

For starters, it wasn’t our street party. For the past three years we’ve been invited to crash the street party of our good friends who live along Wellington West.

As far as I understand it, the firefighters are booked in advance. That’s all there is to it!

3 | Joe

June 19th, 2007 at 12:04 pm

I live on the street.

This was the fifth year that we had the street closed off and threw a party. The street party is held on West Wellington Village’s Hampton Avenue, right off of Wellington.

My next door neighbor (a friend of Andrea’s) organizes and plans the event with me, and the rest of the street gives a hand and helps out, such as have the firefighters at the street party, pick up and return barricades, book the bouncy castle, plan “the battle of jello”, have games and activities for the kids.

Everyone just has a good time, and this year’s street party was a huge success. We had a large turnout, estimating 80 partygoers, made up of residents from the neighborhood and our own street, friends and family.

Every year I try to have some kind of contest for the kids: one year we picked the king, queen, and court jester of Hampton Avenue, another year we held an air guitar contest, and last year had a disco dance contest in which parents were invited to join their kids and boogie on the dance floor. Right, Andrea–dancing queen?

A big hit of the street party are the firefighters and their truck, and this year they made themselves a bigger hit with everyone when they took out the hose and sprayed the kids and (look for Andrea in the picture) also a grownup or two.

What every kid and grownup can’t wait for and really looks forward to–the highlight of our street party–is near the end when all the kids line up and toss jello at each other in the “battle of jello”.

A street party is just a great way to have fun and meet other people from the neighborhood and build a real spirit of community.

Though Emma and Sara don’t live on the street, they are “on the list”, which also gets their lucky parents into the social event of the year.