Happy 8th!

So the weekends of Sept went into prepping for Abby’s birthday party. She wanted to have a themed birthday this year, which we do every year. This year it was a very “commercial” theme – My Little Pony. Typically, I prefer to steer her away from commercial/mainstream themes like this, but she was pretty determined and we had gone non-traditional the last couple years, so it was fine.  Abby had ton of grandiose ideas for her party. I tried to keep her focus. Even agreeing to the most simple ideas would mean that I would need to sacrifice entire weekends to prep for this party. Sheesh!

Not sure if you all are familiar with the individual ponies. There’s six of them and, of course, they have their own unique personalities. So we tried to match each pony to a particular party activity that they might actually do. For example, Apple Jack works on an apple farm and loves apples. So her area was an apple bob game. Twilight Sparkle loves to read and loves to learn new things, so we had her sponsor a book mark making station. Pinkie Pie was for playing pin the tail on the pony. Rarity had a hoof painting station (finger nail polish). Fluttershy (the most boring of the bunch, but Abby’s favorite) was in charge of the food. We really couldn’t think of any party game that she should sponsor. She’s too boring! And for Rainbow Dash, we set up a cloud race. I made the girls a bunch of rainbow capes so they could run and make "sonic rainBOOMs,” which Rainbow Dash is famous for. I also made fluffy tulle clouds to hang around the court for the girls to race to. We even set up a cutie mark station.

 

I made the capes; I made the clouds for the cloud race; I made the pin the tail on the pony; I made most of the decorations; I made all of the signs; I even made the happy birthday banner for the group photos. We only bought the cake and food, enough to feed ten girls and ten parents. Guess how many people actually showed? Four girls. Two of the girls didn’t even want to eat cake. None of the parents stayed. All of the food and cake pretty much went to waste. Oh well. Every year we argue over how many kids to invite. To keep costs down, I usually try to keep the invite list to 6 or so. This year I was willing to go up to 10. Ten invites went out but still only 4 girls show up. Gosh.

 

Here's Bailey modeling one of the sonic rainboom capes I made. Sorry for the limited pictures. I only snapped a few shot with my phone. 

 

 
Abby had fun, and that's all that really matters. Her most favorite friends showed up. Because there were only a couple girls, we let them stay for 6 hours. We were even willing to turn this into an impromptu slumber party, but the other parents said they all had to go home.

Sigh.

Here's some of the girls enjoying the apple bobbing game. It was hysterical to watch, and the kids were laughing so hard they were falling over!

 

Happy birthday, kiddo!