Wild Times at the Magic Castle

It's the morning after. Yes, the party was tons of fun, but I have to say that I'm glad to have another 11 months before it's Molly's birthday again. ;)

I stayed up the night before the party until 1:00 am, decorating and getting the cake ready. It's always a little bit stressful, but I do love it.

The party theme was "Pink Castle" (Emma's choice). So the house was decorated with lots of pink decorations. I hung stars, streamers, ribbon and balloons from the ceiling all over the downstairs of the house. I made use of some paper flowers from her party two years ago, and stuck those up on the living room walls as well, just to give it a fun feel.

The invitations promised "contests of wit, bravery and skill". The contest of "skill" was to pin the fire on the dragon. The contest of "wit" was to figure out the clue and find where the Queen had left her favourite necklace, and the contest of "bravery" was to enter the Ogre's Cave and retrieve the Wizard's lost magic wand (Chris had originally wanted to dress up as an ogre to scare the bejeezus out of them, which I talked him out of, explaining that there was no way we would be able to afford the future therapy bills that this would inevitably lead to).

I learned a few things during the party, for sure. Like never underestimate the volume level of 8 children chanting, "CAKE! CAKE! CAKE! CAKE! CAKE! CAKE!". Also - ice cream cones are a treat even if they don't actually contain any ice cream (the kids all wanted a cone to go with their cake (the castle towers were made from ice cream cones). I began to tell them there weren't enough on the cake to go around, when I remembered the whole box in the pantry and figured what the hell...this was surprisingly a big hit. Who knew?

Another thing I learned was to never underestimated how exhausting a five year old's birthday party can be. By the end of the afternoon, I was pooped!

The important part was that all the kids had a blast...and so did I. I do love doing parties for my kids, but I'm glad that I have a good long break until the next one....