Birthday Update

Fiona and I had a great time on her birthday. I had to start the day with a presentation for work, but was able to take off after that. Fiona got to open one present in the morning with papa and sister; I got her a "Friendly Fionna" doll from Troop Groovy Girls. She adored it and has been hauling it everywhere with her ever since.

Fiona took cupcakes to school which was a big hit, and since it was the annual trike-a-thon on her birthday she also took her bike with her and got to ride around with her friends before I picked her up. I picked her up at 11:00 and took her out to her requested restaurant for lunch; IHOP. She was wearing her birthday crown from school, so she got a lot of attention in the restaurant. Some lady even sent over a dollar to her via the waitress. It was sweet. Then at the end the whole staff came out and asked everyone in the place to give her a round of applause. They sang for her and gave her an ice cream Sunday. She was kind-of freaked out by the attention, but she enjoyed the treat.

After IHOP we went home and I rested on the bed and she played with her new doll for a while. I had asked her what she wanted to do: go to a movie, go rollerskating, bowling... she picked the park. So in the afternoon we headed out on her bike to the local park. She met two girls her age there and they played an hour. It was really nice, and made me REALLY miss the freedom of a stay-at-home mom to just do fun stuff in the middle of the day if we want to...

Paul came home around 5:00 and Fiona tore into her presents. She wanted pizza for dinner (urgh, so much greasy food in one day!) and afterwords we had the pink cake that Paul had baked at her request. It was Yummy! The rest of the evening Fiona and Saskia played with her new toys. It was a great day.

Fiona's party was on Sunday. It was an underwater theme and I spent far too many hours cutting out sharks, fish, seashells, crabs etc and pasting them to the walls with green seaweed streamers and blue wave streamers. I don't think the kids even noticed them. I also made a couple of games and set up a craft for when the kids got there and Paul made an awesome cake. We got those chocolate molds that you see at the holiday's in aquatic shapes and made fish, starfish, turtles etc out of green, white and orange chocolate. (Pictures will eventually be published).

Fiona invited 8 kids from preschool and all but one showed up. It was cool, the kids were really well behaved! I wish my Girl Scouts could listen that attentively. The craft and games were a big hit but as usual I WAY overestimated the time it would take them to do them so we ended up with about an hour to kill. This started off okay as free play but quickly degenerated as fights broke out over the toys. When I couldn't take it any more we went outside to play "sharks and fishes" (aka tag) but that quickly was ended when Fiona wiped out on the cement driveway. At least it wasn't someone else' kid. Mostly I was desperately trying to keep them off our playset as I didn't want some parent suing me if their kid fell off but I was a miserable failure. Luckily, no one got hurt so it all worked out in the end. I have to say, I love birthday parties and I think I'm pretty good at throwing them, but they wipe me out! I'm glad they only come once (we'll twice, two kids) a year.