Party day! *sniff sniff*

My girly-wirly had her fifth birthday party today. She has some very dedicated friends. I know this because, for the second year in a row, I managed to schedule her birthday party during the only snowstorm in March.

I'm THAT good.

But we plowed ahead, nevertheless, figuring that if we planned it, they would come.

So I decorated (supervised by the small girl attached to the head you can see part of there at the bottom).


And I decorated some more (Oz helped, too!)

And I made the cake (that post will come in a day or two).
And, thankfully, people did show up. Lots of them. M2 was in her element. People. Lots of them. I think she darn near died and went to heaven. She promptly hauled everyone back to her room and M1's room and shut them in closets.

Well, some of them. And to be fair, the ones who were shut in closets were typically there voluntarily.

It's kind of like watching circus clowns, only with small children. Amazing how many of them can fit comfortably inside M2's tiny little closet.

But after a while, I rounded up all the munchkins and sat them down for an art project. I had originally planned to have outdoor activities, but those ideas kinda got cancelled for me, so a panicked run to Michael's netted me a bunch of $1 wooden crafts (heart-shaped boxes for the girls and wiggly snakes for the boys) ripe for painting. Armed with dropcloths, paper towels, and lots of courage (and drafting parental supervision along the way), we painted. I had, in my house, 13 children simultaneously painting. And we only had two incidents, one being my daughter painting her own dress. The other involved a boy and a sock.

That's collateral damage I can live with.

I would have taken pictures of their beautiful creations, but the camera battery had decided to tell me it was running low just as I was taking the picture of the decorated table, and I figured that the cake shots were better than the craft shots and that extra few minutes of battery charging time was worth it.

I think I made the right decision.

We had lunch, too, beautifully catered by Chick-Fil-A and their party trays that Oz graciously went - in the snow - and picked up. And I made fruit salad. And we had pink lemonade. And nobody spilled anything, and the children all ate happily, and the adults all ate happily, and all was right in the world. I think it was the most hitchless party I've ever held.

Lunch was, naturally, followed by CAKE TIME!
Don't you love my daughter in her strappy little sundress with 2 inches of snow through the window behind her? She loves central heating; she just doesn't know how much.
I plan to blackmail her with this photo some day. She'd probably die now if she had seen it.

Which is why she hasn't.
It was interesting to watch her open her gifts. I heard noises come out of the girl that I haven't ever heard out of anything other than those hens that you get at the Fourth of July. This was one of the items that caused such a shriek. Tom & Jerry movies were another. She got excited about everything, for which I was very grateful, because sometimes trying to get her to be thankful and happy for gifts is like trying to get a turtle through a crosswalk at rush hour. It can't be done without a lot of mental and physical anguish on everyone's part.

She even went and said thank you to everyone individually when she got done.

This picture - please ignore my husband face-down on the carpet in the background... he had a nap attack that just couldn't be stopped - shows the only casualty of war from the day. M1 and one of his best friends were play-fighting with swords, and M1 got lightsabered right on the side of his nose.

I'm trying to decide if he'll have a black eye tomorrow or not. It's been about 8 hours, and he says the spot "itches."

Boys.