TBnJ

Ok, well, it's really old news at this point. But two weeks ago, B turned 5.

On his actual birthday, he went to school and had cookies and juice with his classmates. They made him a crown that was really cute. He wore it again at his party. After school, we opened presents from Oma and Opa and Grandpa and Mama and Daddy-o. Later in the week, we opened a second round of presents from various folks which arrived a few days after his birthday but before his party. For dinner, we had leftovers, a blueberry pie and Rice Cream. B was happy with the menu. T actually ate some of the blueberry pie even though it's not usually his favorite.

After dinner, the kids settled in to playing with one of B's new acquisitions, a huge drum of Tinker Toys. T and B were delicately pulling pieces out for about a minute when T realized there was a better way to do this. The resulting picture is at left.

On the Sunday after his birthday, we held B's birthday party. B wanted to hold the party on his actual birthday like we did last year, but we explained that not a lot of people would have come if we held it on a Tuesday night. Sunday at the park was gorgeous, though, and there was a great turnout of about 25 kids including ours. It was sunny and really nice out though the oak pollen was provoking quite a few runny noses on kids and adults alike.

B picked a Franklin theme for the party as he LOVES Franklin books. He likes the tv show and movies but not nearly as much as the books. Unfortunately, Franklin is "out" on the scale of kid coolness. There's not a lot of Franklin merchandise out there to be had. I managed to find a set of 8 napkins, 8 plates, and 8 cups on Ebay that weren't $10 a pack (no, I'm not kidding) which we interspersed with lime green, medium green, and yellow place settings. We made the cake at home as we always do to accommodate allergy issues. The shell is chocolate with chocolate icing; the legs and head are vanilla cupcakes and mini-cupcakes. The toenails are chocolate chips; the eyes are dried cherries. We also made a lot of vanilla and chocolate cupcakes for kids to eat as they are easier and quicker to distribute at the party. The vanilla cupcakes are our favorite recipe that's a creation of mine; the chocolate was a vegan recipe off the web. I wasn't impressed with the chocolate recipe. It was ok, but not fabulous. Next year, I'll try to figure out what I did in 2007 instead. It was better.

The kids did the usual activities for our parties. They played on the playground. They played with the bean bag toss which we changed to have a turtle on it. I found a few Franklin board games on Ebay which several kids enjoyed playing. We printed out a few Franklin coloring pages and bookmarks for those who wanted to color. We also brought along our huge bucket of Legos which always ends up being super popular. Why run around or play party games when you can just play with Legos? The kids did also get the parachute out and put beach balls and bean bags in it to bounce around.

We also brought the butt scooters and cones which got a bit of use on the concrete of the pavilion. However, they got the most use after the party had wound down to a trickle of guests. There were 9 kids left, and they took the scooters on the small hill near the pavilion to go "sledding." One does what they have to in order to sled in Texas! But the sledding was super popular fun with the kids, including T and B. Especially T. By that point, though, J had sprouted a fever of 100 and was ready for me to take her home.

For party favors, we avoided bags of little plastic things. All the kids took home a book. The younger crowd got Franklin books, and the grade school kids all got a turtle themed chapter book. The kids who were over three also got a Tippy Turtle game. The turtle lays on its back and rocks; the object of the game is to stack all the round blocks on it without them tipping over. The littler ones who were still a bit too orally fixated got a Folkmanis turtle finger puppet instead of a choking hazard.

Labels: around the house, in Austin