The birthday party

Beginning at 10:30 am we had 17 kids and 8 adults descend upon our house.  I had secured all toys in the house with more than five pieces in a locked room/cabinet. It was a genius move on my part. It meant a lot less clean up than usual when there's half the number of kids here. I am contemplating leaving them locked away for a very very long time. 

Ta-da

The lovely thing about a four year old birthday party is that they generally play by themselves and the adults can socialize.  It's possible we never thought the day would come and then one day it happened. Glorious.

Miss M was set on having a piñata. I am a sucker for all stupid ideas so we had a piñata.  I filled it with lots of candy and hung it on the shepard's hook. We let Miss M hit first and made the boys go last.  In hindsight, we could have let the boys go first b/c the piñata was really hard to break. Sinead finally took it upon herself to beat the piñata to death. It took her approximately 15 serious swings before the thing finally cracked. And once it cracked the kids swarmed.

Big Willie got a shot too.

It was difficult to corral 17 kids away from a four year old swinging a bat. We luckily didn't have any serious accidents.

We catered Chick-Fil-A for lunch. It was amazing. They did a great job with catering and the kids actually ate. There are many days when we present the kids with food and no one eats much of anything.

The birthday girl picnicked in the living room with some of her friends.

The cookie cake. Singing to the birthday girl.  The patio was filled with sprinkles and cookie crumbs and icing so doing it outside was perfect.

After majority of the party left, we played pin the tail on the horse b/c that was Miss M's other request.  The game came with a cardboard mask. The kids cheated and all pinned the tail pretty close so we wrapped their eyes up with a scarf and made them play fair. Miss M was so close while the others ended up putting the tail on the curtain.

Miss M got a super hero cape. One side of the cape has a star burst with a letter M and the other side has a cat. It's amazing.  

She received a soft and cozy blanket with her name on it. After all our party guests left she just curled up on the couch and relaxed with some shows. I think she had a fun day.  It was minimally stressful all around. Mimi was here to help me with all the preparation and cleaning up which made it minimally stressful.