Survived

Whew!

We survived another birthday. It wasn't all that bad too. I tried to be prepared. I tried to schedule it all well enough that I wasn't up until 2 am the night before putting the last touches on everything. In fact, after Abby went to bed, dreaming her dreams of birthday wishes coming true, I put the final touches on a minor party idea, glanced at the clock and was surprised that it was only 9:30. I felt like it was already midnight. So I went to bed.

I was seeing bricks in my sleep...

Here's Abby's invitation:



In case you couldn't tell, Abby's theme was Legos, which she picked out herself. It made for a very colorful theme...






Plus, it was a good theme for boys and girls.

I didn't take as many pictures as I should of, but sometimes one should focus on living life rather than recording it.

One of the items I was most proud of making was the party favors. I made the little boxes look like lego bricks. Well, at least, I thought they looked like lego bricks.



And what was inside? Why, tiny lego creations of course. There was a small airplane and a small 4X4 inside each one. There was also coupons to Legoland and the online Lego Club.

The day of the party was pretty rough. It was perfectly scheduled without much breathing room for problems or tantrums. Luckily, we didn't have either. Lee and Abby were in the party mood and were being extremely helpful. We loaded up the car, arrived on time, just barely finished off the party decorations before the guests arrived, greeted our guests, pointed them in the direction of the first activity, and then -- waited. A few guests were late. What was most strange was that all the kids were terribly well behaved. It was kinda eerie how quiet it was. Lee and I looked at each other and suggested serving cake immediately, just to see if sugar would make a difference on the kids.

When everyone else started to show up, the mood lightened. Even still, the kids weren't being wild and crazy. I mean, we got this giant room available for rumpus and ruckus, but the kids were all sitting quietly at the tables, working on their projects.

There was a design your own lego head table (a Lee idea). It was a great idea. We just printed off a couple dozen sheets of the outline of the lego man's head and deleted his face. Then, we brought markers, glue, fuzzy balls, googley eyes, and of course, pipe cleaners.





Seriously, was there ever a better kid craft supply? Kids can make anything with pipe cleaners. One little girl started to make hair accessories with her pipe cleaners. The others copied her and then took turns winding them into each other's hair. That's how Abby's birthday crown began. The other kids made it for her. How cute!



The other activity table included putting together your own lego step-by-step creation. These were a little hard for 5 year olds. Some of them didn't even try for long. Some of the older ones did sit down and focus for a long time. We let all those kids keep whichever set they were working on. Of course, there were the big kids who wanted to play too.





There was the Lego toss game (Lee helped me make).





We also had a bowling room (one of Abby's favorite games for some strange reason) and a ball room.

It was the ball room that finally got all the kids to act like kids. It also took the help of one of the fathers to get the ball rolling, so to speak. Once he started horse-playing with his daughters in the ball room, the other kids trickled in, one by one, until the whole room was filled with flying balls.









That was fun to watch - safely from the outside!

Then, of course, we opened presents.





One of Abby's long time friends, Katie who is 8, read her birthday cards for me. That was nice!





And ate cake!

Okay, so the cake was tough too. Lee baked it and I was tasked to frost the son-of-a-gummy. The blue "brick" came out better then the other two. I refuse to show a close up of the disaster - so here's a far away shot!



We also blew up a couple balloons. Just a couple. When it was clean up time, Abby got to play with the bunch. She ran the length of the room and was having such a blast playing with them, I had to snap a couple pictures.




It just goes to show you though. Who needs expensive toys when a bunch of balloons will do?!



Happy Birthday, Abs!