I ought to be charging for these tips ...

Let's say you are a single dad because your wife left you for a camp full of teenage girls with only $14 left in the budget and a half the budget period to go and you are a busy guy, but your son goes and requests a birthday party this year anyway ... how do you handle it? Relax , take a deep breath, and follow these simple steps for a fail-proof party.

1.) Have the birthday boy (BB) plan the guest list, and itinerary.

2.) Download this MS birthday invitation template: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC010127911033.aspx?pid=CT101433941033. Let BB and sis spend the next 3 hours customizing, selecting fonts and colors, printing out, stamping and hand delivering invitations.

3.) Have BB remind you that Mom always puts pictures on the table for birthdays. Let him rummage through all the photos and spend the next hour sorting & classifying them.

Let him pick how he wants them laid out on the table.

Don't sweat it when BB jam-packs 5 Million pictures of himself onto the table in a way that would never meet a discerning mom's approval.

4.) Find old unused roll of black crepe paper. Tell BB and sis that they can decorate the house for the party all by themselves.

Help him figure out how to obscure Elmo on the old kiddie HappyBirthday sign to enhance his already jammin' decor

5.) Get a DJ and make some signs so everyone knows that there is a "Party in Backyard".

6.) When the guests arrive, make sure you have some structured activities planned

7.) Play that awesome game from Amy Shoemaker's 5th birthday party where you see how many clothes pins you can drop from your forehead into a jar. No clothes pins lying around? ... No problem, army guys work just as well. Jar can also be swapped out for old Tupperware container.

8.) Put these guys ...

into these to keep the cheater 8 year old boys from trying to look through, under, around the blindfold. Now, play another old-school game ... blind man's bluff.

9.) Get out the Lawn Bowling set that Uncle Nate sent (thanks man ... I owe you!) and let each kid play a frame of lawn bowling

10.) When the games are through get out the doughnut cake (i.e. a stack of doughnuts on a plate w/ a candle in the top) and soda

and serve up the troops.

11.) After the cake is gone. Have the BB open his presents

This could take longer than expected if the fun neighbor brothers spent 3 hours wrapping multiple layers of boxes with scotch, masking, and duct tape (no lie), and packing the various box levels with balloons and streamers and paper mache cut outs and wrapping paper and random notes, painted polka dots, etc.

even when you think you are done, you aren't because at the bottom are at least 40 envelopes, each filled with paper and sealed. Settle in when you hear the boys say ... "4 of them have something in them and the rest are just junk! ... but you gotta open them all to know which is which."

12.) Send the kids downstairs to watch this movie and make themselves ill eating this pile of caramel s'mores popcorn

13.) The next 1 hr 45 min are all yours.

You're welcome.