brief candle life

Dirty Sugar Cookies This is a blog kept by one of my favorite authors.

The party was so fabulous. I'm gonna give you a description so you feel like you're there. There were 20 kids, and their parents there; toddlers from my playgroups, and neighborhood kids. First of all the zoo: the baby animals were there to pet all over the yard. A big curly wooly sheep in the middle of the yard. Four tiny baby goats that were so adorable, they ate all the overgrown grass near the fence while they were here. There was a snuggly grey bunny just chilling out, and a duck & 3 chicks in cages that were taken out on a one by one basis for petting (cuz they're liable to fly away). There was a nice pony that all the older kids rode, and toddlers mostly just sat on for photo ops. "no pony, no pony, mommy up" was DD's take on the pony.

Then I had the sandbox open with lots of toys in it, balls of all sizes all over the yard, chalk and ride-on toys on the bball court. I had the sand table with all of DD's jungle animals. There were giant balloons; a my little pony, pink care bear, and green turtle, some animal print balloons. I had wrapped up the four trees in contrasting crepe paper to mimic animal prints- black & white like a zebra, orange & black like a tiger, yellow & black like a bee, and green & blue like a toucan. Plus I hung a bunch of extra crepe paper to make a billowing crepe curtain across one branch. Happy birthday banners everywhere, and a cute jungle print tablecloth. Beer for the adults, and juice boxes for the kids. The food got totally eaten to the last crumb. There were just two chicken wings left at the end. We had dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets, hot chicken wings/legs, spinach nuggets, cheese & crackers, fruit, veggies & dip, animal cookies, rainbow goldfish.

Dh's rock music for kids was playing on the boom box the whole time and so many people commented on it. The neighbors were incredulous that it was him, and one of the neighbors is a teacher who's going to buy some for her school kids to listen to cuz they're sick of all the kids' music that they're allowed to play.

The cake was awesome. I had ordered this Madagascar cake with jungle animals but they were out of that set of toys. So the cake decorator called me at home from her house the night before and told me she was going to decorate the colors just like the cake I ordered, and buy the animals herself and arrange them. She was so sweet, and charged me way less than what it should have been, with a ton of farm animals amongst trees on the cake. And it was delicious.

Then the presents were so awesome too; everyone in the neighborhood knows how DD loves Care Bears because whenever we go for walks she takes all her mini care bears with her. So she got four fluffy plush care bears along with cartoons on dvd. Lots of books, and animal themed puzzles and toys. Everyone just really came through with the perfect gift for maia's interests.

So I'm very happy with the way the party turned out. By the end I got to settle down with a beer while 3 remaining kids played on the slide and talked to each other. Everyone left feeling really good and had a happy time at the party.

Well here I am. Don't know what I'll be sharing exactly, but it's nice to have a toe in this pond.