Sunday 1 April 2012

We're going to party like it's 8 years before you were born.


We had a great time. We are quite good at celebrating, I think. There were moments where I felt like I could happily kill some people, and vowed never to have a kids party in my home again, but on the whole, I'd say we all enjoyed ourselves massively, guests included. After a late nights prep where I kind of panicked about not knowing just how many people would be coming and ended up making enough cupcakes to feed the whole building, I was awoken at 5 (how apt) by the birthday girl. Lucky me to get to share in her excitement when I hadn't gone to bed until after midnight.


We'd been decorating, clearing, prepping, tidying, and all the other things you need to do. I gave a very relaxed Stevie a bag of balloons to blow up. My theory is that kids of Orla and Hamish's age are happy as long as there are balloons and music. So I went mad on the balloons too. We nearly blacked out simultaneously trying to get them all blown up. It was fun. We veered from lightheadedness into near unconsciousness many, many times until Stevie begged me to find my balloon pump. 


I left him to finish up while I got on with the finishing touches... Little did I know he had left the balloon pump lying out so when I got ready to get my modelling balloons ready the next morning, it turned out Orla had managed to break it. I could have cried. Well, not really, I was a bit annoyed at not being able to do it, but not so much that I wanted to go out and find a new pump. Hell, I was up to my eyeballs preparing the unhealthiest food kids could ever desire. 


Actually, in the 5 hours sleep I got I had a nightmare about the children having huge allergic reactions to the cake glitter. It's edible, and it looks amazing, but they do recommend that you *don't eat it*. I ignored that advice, valuing aesthetics over possible seizures, and then spent my sleeping hours in torment. 


And my little princess & my little pirate (who couldn't understand why I was making him wear his pyjama bottoms) were packed with excitement like little tightly coiled springs waiting for the party to start. Everyone arrived at once, bang on 2pm, someone gave me 30 seconds warning of their child's *severe* nut allergy  - I did mention the cake glitter *may* be made with peanut oil...but they decided to take their chances in exchange for sparkly prettiness. And no kids died or ended up in hospital, so that was good!


So we danced, played games, gave out prizes for being good, and some for those who were utterly crap, ate, sung, laughed, broke up arguments, and ran around like nutcases. What more do you want from a party, well except copious amounts of alcohol? That would have been nice.


By quarter to 4 they were creating an awesome amount of noise, and we left them to play in Orla's room. The girls mostly took to the tent and camped out, while the boys jumped, and argued, and bounced, and ran around some more. And then bang on 4pm all the parents appeared as if by magic and whisked their buzzing little kids away, and just like that, it was over.

13 comments:

  1. That looks like one kick ass kids party! I love their costumes, possibly deadly cake glitter, and - hold up - is that a picture of 2 kids with eye patches on your wall? Awesome.

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    1. Yeah, I'm going to leave it like that and see how many years it takes Stevie to notice!I was just looking at your NY photos last night - I read your post, clicked your link to your FB photos and they made me all nostalgic -we went pre-kids and I would LOVE to go again. But I realise I never left a comment - your photos are great, it looks like you both had a brilliant time. I'm on my way back to the blog to comment now...>

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  2. Look like a wonderful party, I am truly amazed by the work you put in, what a lucky daughter (and Pirate son of course) you have!

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    1. Thankyou! It wasn't too much work. If I could have had someone else tidy and clean the apartment it would have been a breeze!!

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  3. Hello there!

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  4. Oh wow... that looks like so much fun! Love love love the cupcakes and stripy pj bottoms! And I would be severely disappointed if someone had given up their chance to eat GLITTER, just because they were worried about a silly little allergy. Most of which are fake, anyway. Aren't they?

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    1. Do you know I need to read up more on these allergies. I just can't remember that there were so many when I was young, or maybe I was oblivious. What has caused so many children to have so may allergies? Anyway, so far I've not heard of ANYONE with a glitter allergy - so we're good to go. I half considered sprinkling some of the gold holographic stuff on my toast. I wondered if it might just take it from regular old breakfast food into another realm.

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    2. I agree... it seems like there are a lot more now. All these people doing gluten-free and so on. I also think lactose intolerance is made up... maybe just because I'm from Wisconsin, aka the Dairy State and therefore there is nothing better than cheese. But all these new things seem strange... I'm not allergic to anything but if I ever find out I'm allergic to glitter I will be severely disappointed. Try putting the glitter on something you really dislike and seeing if that improves it!

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    3. Oh, I never even knew you were from Wisconsin. I think that was the first place in America I ever visited. I was at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater for work. We had a great time. I got to wear a cheesehead and everything. Wisconsin totally changed my preconceived ideas of Americans. It was a revelation to meet Americans who shared quite a similar sense of humour to me, and weren't all loud and in your face. Loved it! One of the best holida... sorry, work trips I've ever had!

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  5. Really? That's pretty funny... and kind of a random place for a work trip for someone from the UK! I'm not a big fan of Whitewater myself, but that's mostly because it's 30 minutes from our house and half of my high school went to college there. So I opted for one of the other campuses that was 3+ hours away, haha. I might be slightly biased, but I think there are pretty good people in the midwest.

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  6. I think that first picture of Orla is my favourite picture that you've ever taken, it's absolutely BRILLIANT, everything about it, what a totally fab photo. Totally gutted for you about the ballooning but what an AMAZING party you threw... wowzerooni. Massive gold Star, Mum.

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    1. Yes, I like it too, but normal photographic levels will be resumed shortly. I took some pretty awful photos today to balance things out. :-)

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