Happy Belated Birthday

Elissa's birthday party finally got a start today, after pox-related delays. There were 10 kids here, doing what preschool kids do. We played pass the parcel, there were cries of "she's not letting me play with her" and we all chugged towards the inevitable cake.

As you can see, this year's request was the ladybird cake.

The candles were duly lit.

And Elissa met her cake.

There was the usual singing (goddammit I wish I could sing Happy Birthday, I sing badly at the best of times, but I sing Happy Birthday horrifically), and then comes the blowing out of the candles.

Elissa huffed

And she puffed

And she blew those candles out (with a great deal of assistance from most of the gathered guests).

And then, of course, we ritually sacrificed the ladybird.

Master 5

My bub born on the 4th of July turned 5 today yesterday, and we celebrated in the traditional way, with his friends, too much food and a cake. Well, I call it a cake, you can judge for yourself below.

I have a formula for kids' birthday parties, and I rarely deviate. Kids, backyard, food with as little nutritional value as possible, Sunday, 2-5pm. And a cake that I make, with way more confidence than actual skill.

Today Yesterday started out pretty wobbly. It was too wet on the back deck for the kids to go out at the beginning of the party, so I tried to get some party games underway inside. I had no luck at all, and was not assisted by the birthday boy who had an attack of the shys and was hiding under a chair. So I sent them to the table to eat and we reassessed the outside situation. We finally got enough sugar into Charlie to loosen him up and we released the mob to the backyard.

There they stayed until I called them in an hour and half later for pass the parcel.

That finished, they bolted back outside and I had to round them up again for the cake. *Cough* Erm, the cake. It was supposed to be a cake with a chocolate dome that gets smashed to reveal the cake with goodies underneath. Sadly, the chocolate didn't come out of the bowl at all well. It ended up more of a mudslide than a dome. Still, I turned it to its slightly better side, and seriously covered it with lollies, to produce this frankenstein.

Yes, in case you're wondering, those things holding up the candles are bits of pineapple, I failed to make the cupcakes that I had intended to use for this purpose. First class disaster all round. And then I remembered we needed a hammer. A trip to the garage and some foil, and voila:

And so I took it all to the table and after the blowing and the singing, there was the smashing.

It was hard work, and they were all willing him on.

In the end, I had to help him, and then finish it off with a knife. It was worth it.

I had approximately 7.2 seconds to take this shot before this happened:

Once they'd all eaten, they disappeared outside again and I had to round them up again to come in and open the presents. I don't have a photo of that, but it looked pretty much like the one above, but with a present in the middle of the fists instead of a cake.

Another party executed. Smiles all round at the end of the day. And it wiped me out so badly I couldn't even manage to blog it last night.

Four months until the next one.

Happy Birthday Ben

Ben's seven years old today. Somehow seven sounds much older than six. He's a pretty easy kid to get along with most of the time, and I'm pretty pleased we kept him*. He has also reached an important milestone - as of today I will no longer be folding and putting his washing away - I'll put it in a pile on his desk and he can do it.

He traded a real birthday party for a DSi this year, so we just have 2 friends from school and a family friend coming for pizza and movies tonight. Still, even pseudo parties need a cake, so here it is:

As you can see from the side on shot - I won't be bothering any of the folks who feature on Sunday Sweets, but it's done, a whole hour before I pick them all up from school.

Those red stripes took some serious food colouring. This is after I washed my hands about 3 times.

I think I may have a cup of tea before I go get him.

*No, we never considered giving him away, just a variation on running gag in my extended family.

Birthdays

1 loaf of fairy bread
1 packet of iced arrowroot biscuits
10 bags of lollies
30-odd cupcakes
1/2 batch of coconut ice
1/2 very large birthday cake
20 green jellies
5 litres of cordial

This is what 19 kids can get through at a 6 year old's birthday party. And all of it green. It was a green party - green colour, green ideas.

And what happens immediately after you have 19 kids in your backyard? It buckets down of course.

And what do you do when it buckets down? You play pass the parcel.

This was actually really successful. I drew the line at prizes for every kid both on sanity and green grounds. Instead, we had cards at each layer (on the backs of outdated business cards) with instructions for each kid to do something - sing a verse of "My Highland Goat", swap places with someone whose name starts with M etc. Any time a kid looked like a deer in the headlights at the prospect of fulfilling the task, we had the whole group do it. There was much hilarity.

The cake request was for a frog - green colour, green idea. Since I am no cake decorator, we flicked through a book looking for ideas, and this was the frog that resulted.

Another popular event was bobbing for apples. This was how it began.

And this was how it ended.

I'm not sure any of these kids' parents will let them come back to my house...

In an attempt to dry them out, they belted a pinata for 45 minutes.


As you may have noticed, we made it ourselves. Possibly with more structural integrity than was good for it. This was our first attempt, we might get it closer next time. Although I am very proud of the fact that no matter how much we belted it, it didn't fall down. The kids themselves managed to dent it, but it took Crash, Ed and Sol (2 adults and a 15 year old) to smash it apart. Then there were kids and lollies everywhere! And they were all just a tad shattered. I also need to learn the right kinds of lollies to put in them....

The other really cool thing was the presents. Every kid made some effort to do something green. Homemade paper and cards. Painted newspaper. The cards were gorgeous, I don't think I'm buying any more cards for kids' parties - the homemade ones are way cooler.

And one very inspired mother wrapped the gifts in the pre-school artworks of her kids. Truly brilliant.

It was exhausting, but it was a great party. 19 tired, wet, filthy kids left at 5pm. It must have been good.

Birthday goodness

I've played the birthday card to excess this week. It started on Wednesday, when I went to trivia (we had to go, we had won the week before and had a $50 voucher to spend). We had a killer night and won again, thanks in part to my wasting hours last week playing on this terribly addictive website, starting with the periodic table quiz, which Juz referred me to. But thanks mostly to Marina and Pat's scary trivia knowledge. They had a chocolate sponge cake with chocolate meringue on top for me. Yum.

Then Thursday was my actual birthday, so I invoked birthday privileges and went to the pub. Great evening, much rubbish was talked as usual.

Friday night I had to concede it was Crash's turn, and he spent the night in the city with mates.

Yesterday my friend Cate had a spare ticket to the ballet due to her mother being OS. She very kindly offered it to me, and even took me to lunch before hand. There was champagne and it was all very civilised. Of course, having just been involved in a discussion on tutus with bluemilk, I did spend the whole thing examining it in light of that critique. It came out pretty well actually. It was a modern show, with several small pieces rather than one long story. It had female characters from man hating (and murdering) lesbians to domineering wives to meek and mild girlies and everything in between. Not all of them such disgusting stereotypes as I have just described either. :) The last section was all comedy, and included a piece with 6 ballerinas in traditional white tutus performing a very traditional type of dance, but buggering it up. I could only conclude that the choreographer has spent way too much time in infants school ballet productions, at least that was all I could do in between snorting with laughter.

Last night Crash cooked a 3 course meal of prawn cocktails, roast beef stuffed with bacon (how can you go wrong?) and melons in Sauternes. We watched a Midsomer Murder and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I am blessed. And overfed.

So the birthday is done and dusted for another year. Except that I have one more treat coming. Crash gave me $100 cash to do with what I will (I think it was supposed to be CDs, he ran out of shopping time, it has been pretty crazy). I realised after reading the unread books meme, that despite loving books, I read practically nothing. I also realised that the reason for this is quite bizarre - when I go into a book store, if I am shopping for myself I am paralysed. I can't decide on anything and either walk out with yet another Terry Pratchett (or one or two other authors) book or nothing at all. So I handed the cash over to my sister and said "Buy me whatever takes your fancy." I'll have a go at anything if it is there. So I am looking forward to that.