I survived...

My son's fifth birthday party and I didn't even get a t-shirt. Ca y est...the perils of parenthood!

As usual, Bubba had the wide array of cake choices (carrot, vanilla layer, banana chocolate chip and chocolate cupcakes) and ice cream. This year, I had to decorate a cake (vanilla layer) with a theme (Transformers) and it was really difficult.

I could have taken a drawing and transferred it to the cake by painting the icing with the cool Betty Crocker food coloring pens, but I declined. I managed to find a Transformers mask on a website and I printed it and staked it out on the cake with two short skewers, so the mask loomed over one edge of the cake. I added miniature Transformer toys to the side of the cake and wrote "Happy Birthday Bubba" on the cake. He was so excited he refused the first piece of cake. We made him wait to open gifts until his friends finished eating their cake and ice cream. (He eventually did eat some cake later in the evening.)

This year, instead of tormenting the elderly relatives, we just invited the kids from preschool and some friends with young children. It turned out well until Bubba started opening gifts and all the kids swarmed him. The video I made was full of kids surrounding Bubba while he was opening presents. I didn't exactly invite the Miss Manners required number (one kid for each year plus one), so that probably contributed to the mayhem. Little Katie cried when she got swarmed by the other kids, but since she was the only girl at the party, she got to pick the first gift from the goody bag we set up for the kids. Thankfully, she left with a smile on her face and a couple of toys in her bag.

Cleanup was pretty quick for this party. No one ran with food, so it was quite pleasant. I am so glad it was only two hours.