Ahoy Mateys and Princesses!

This year was our first year for a kids' birthday party. The girls wanted a princess party but since there aren't many girls in their classes, we had a pirate and princess theme. Even though Moo agreed to the combined party, 4 days before the party she had a total meltdown and said she wanted her own party. She got over it pretty quickly. Ironically, due to illness, vacations and morning meltdowns, only one boy made it to the party after all. I'm only including a few photos, because I don't like posting other kids photos without parent permission.

We had Mary Poppins there to help and most of the moms stayed. I hope they stayed because they were having fun, and not because we looked like complete incompetent idiots. I really wanted to offer them alcohol, but worried that it would be over the top at 11:30 a.m.

The one thing that was a big hit was that I filled the sandbox and the defunct baby pool with sand and "treasures" (aka plastic crap). The kids loved it and spent most of their time digging for jewels, gold coins, etc.

I was pressured to give out my cake secret, so I'll share it here. On ebay there are lots of folks who can create edible images. I think most of them are on very thin rice paper. They will customize and ship the image to you. It is really easy to slap the image on a cake, or have your local costco do it for you. This is how last year I was able to secure a cake with both Darth Vader and Princess Leia on it. This is not a combination found in nature, so this nice woman on ebay really helped me out.

Oh, and the other thing that worked out nicely was to tell our guests, "no gifts, please." We told the girls they could pick out something they really wanted for their birthday and that mom and dad would buy it for them, rather than getting lots of smaller gifts. We were going to ask for donations of books for Ethiopia Reads in lieu of gifts, but the girls weren't really old enough to understand that concept. Next year, I think.

I was so tired after the party, I took a nap. The girls were on a sugar high, but I was wiped out. I think these parties may be an every-other year phenomenon. Between the planning and my nerves (lots of people didn't rsvp until the last minute) this was a stressful event.