TBnJ

Some how T and J turned seven yesterday. I'm not sure how that happened!

This year's party was smaller than usual which was fine. They were still tired from their trip to St. Louis last week (which I will slowly post about as they fill me in on the details). But many of their friends were out of town for an extended 4th of July weekend. I think part of the reason so many of their friends were gone this past weekend instead of being spread between the two weekends surrounding July 4th was that their school let out so late. But nonetheless, we had their 7th birthday party on their 7th birthday, 7/8/07. I thought about having it on 7/7/07 just for the fun of it but decided not to. J's best friend had her 7th bday party then instead.

T selected a Lego theme for his half of the party. The cake didn't come out as well as we'd hoped. It's a bread pan with mini-muffins on top. The natural orange sugar clumped really badly straight from the brand new bottle, and there wasn't much we could do about it. We were afraid of what might happen if we tried to dry them in the microwave or oven. But it looked enough like an orange Lego that T was happy. He wanted carrot cake as usual which works for me. Who is going to complain when their kid wants a vegetable in his birthday cake? He said he was having a Car-o cake because it was a carrot-Lego cake. If you combine that other ways, you get Car-go or Leg-rot, so I guess we'll stick with Car-o. We used solid colored party items (plates, forks, cups, etc.) in the more traditional Lego colors of green, red, yellow, and blue.

J selected a dolphin theme for her half the party. Her best friend introduced her to dolphins last year, and she's been obsessed ever since. The little plastic dolphins on her cake are actually party favors from her friend's dolphin party last July. I was going to do an elaborate dolphin shaped cake, but she wanted to do this which was much easier, so we went for it. Simplicity is a good thing. J wanted white (vanilla) cake, so she got it. She had dolphin themed plates and a shirt (Oriental Trading Company) to match. We also had ice cream, grapes, cantaloupe, chips, pretzels, water and juice.

We held the party at a nearby park with a covered pavilion as we did for the past two years. The pavilion works well in case of rain though fortunately it didn't rain on us. Like last year, it rained in other parts of Austin, but not on us. It was horribly humid even though it wasn't too hot; most of the adults were dripping. There was a gentle breeze that was nice except when Daddy-o and another daddy were trying to get the candles lit.

The activities were pretty similar to B's party. We had the scooter boards, the bean bag tosses (but with new homemade posters of a dolphin and a Lego on each of them though using last year's dinosaur and ladybug bean bags), the parachute, and coloring pages and other paper activities. For theme related activities, we had a huge box of Legos that I got at a garage sale eons ago for $5. We put out a sheet over the picnic table, and the kids and adults had lots of fun creating things. There were as many adults as kids playing with the Legos most of the time. There were also a dolphin puzzle and a Lego puzzle, though the Lego puzzle was declared to be really hard because it was three puzzles mixed together. The playground was there as well, and the kids played on it a bit, but a lot of kids spent a lot of time doing Legos. The kids who were there at the end of the party also played with their dolphin squirt toys (Oriental Trading Company) out of their goodie bags turning one dad/victim into a very soggy target. They also got little Lego pods (like the car above) to take home and drive their parents nuts with by leaving little pieces all over the floor. :)

All in all it was a good but exhausting day. Nine more months until the next birthday party. B hasn't settled on a theme-- he seems to have abandoned the monkey idea-- but T is positive his party will have a space theme next year. I'm surprised this year's theme wasn't space!

Labels: around the house, in Austin