Party Girl

I'm am happy to say that Sprout's 5th birthday party was a success!

With her actual birthday being Christmas Eve and that weekend being crazy for most people, and this coming weekend being Jen's work party, we decided a party a few weeks early was the way to go. We wanted to do something, but also keep things pretty simple. We let her choose a few friends to have over. She had a reasonably small guest list but the party date got closer, she started asking in include more people. The fact that our home can only accommodate so many people made us insist on keeping numbers down. (Sweetly, she did want to include some of The Bean's friends so that he would have "someone to play with", but we vetoed that, thinking that even one or two six year old boys could quickly derail her mermaid birthday party plans.) In the end, there were eight kids, plus our two. It was a perfect number of guests.

Sprout dressed in her mermaid attire. We brought out some blocks and Magantiles so that there was something for the kids to do while we waited for everyone to arrive. When everyone was here the kids went over to the table to paint and decorate their very own little treasure chests. Sprout surprised me by asking for brown paint and keeping her treasure chest very unadorned. I guess she was going for a realistic look. As kids finished up Jen applied mermaid tattoos and they went back to the living room to play a bit. When everyone was done we distributed popcorn in little paper bags and started up the movie. I was worried it might be a bit long, or a bit scary, but everyone did quite well. A few kids meandered over to our dress up clothes towards the end, but they were quiet and didn't disrupt the others. While the movie played I put "loot" into the treasure chests and moved them over by the front door so the kids could take them home afterwards and we set up the table with cupcakes and fruit. I was up until after midnight making these cupcakes. They weren't particularly complicated, I just didn't time things as well as I should have and was already a bit tired and moving more slowly than I expected. Anyway, they turned out cute. Not mermaid cupcakes, per se, but they definitely fit with the theme. Sprout huffed and puffed (and huffed and puffed) and (eventually) blew out all her candles. Who wants to bet she wished for a unicorn? The kids licked all the icing off the top of their cupcakes and since there were a few minutes to spare and she was SO eager, we let Sprout open her gifts with her friends there. She got lots of art-oriented gifts and plenty of fairy/princess/mermaid/unicorn toys which she was thrilled with.

Parents arrived, the kiddos went home, we got things tidied up pretty efficiently. Her best friend stayed for dinner, which really was the icing on the cake as far as Sprout was concerned. (Pun intended.)

Her actual 5th birthday is just ten days away. I'll need to make more cupcakes as per our Christmas Eve dessert tradition. She'll also get to open her gifts from us then.

I cannot believe this child is going to be five years old.