Planning any birthday party takes some doing, what with deciding a theme, making invitations and decorations, thinking up games plus all that baking and shopping.

Planning a birthday party in a little Polish town in Eastern Europe calls for, in addition to all of the foregoing, some pretty intense creativity – both physical and linguistic.

Emily’s going to be six years old soon, and mommy needs to pull herself together long enough to make another memorable party. Having practiced “Simon Says” with Em recently, I thought it a natural game to include – but, gosh darn it anyway, doesn’t it just lose something when the Polish translation sounds like: “Shee-mon moo-vich”.

A quick web search provided several thousand sites and a great many ideas for party motifs and games, the best being an Egyptian-themed party, complete with mummy-wrap (each child using a roll of toilet paper) and “pin a pyramid on Egypt” game. The invitation script alone, addressed to all those budding archeologists, is worth a peek.

The materials needed to create games, decorations and activities are easily obtained here in my little village closer to Slovakia than Alabama: sand and various homemade “artifacts” for a dig; sugar cubes and egg whites to build pyramids; pretty rocks as party favors found only by individual maps. Educational, targeted towards Emily’s homeschooled personal interest (first developed when playing a Magic Schoolbus game online, called Ancient Egypt), fun and needing very little spoken direction from unilingual mom, I’m quite sure this will be the best sixth birthday party ever.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go outside and start digging up some Polish arrowheads…hmmmm…