The Preslars: Bookended

This was a very long time ago, but you may remember that the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year was a busy one - Wednesday, August 21st was not only the first day of school (which comes with several responsibilities for the PTA volunteer coordinator) but also happened to be my daughter Bitty's birthday. And Birthday party. And the day two little guinea pigs were invited to live at our house. Big day. Well, guess what - Tuesday, June 3rd was the last day of school (which also is the day of our school carnival which comes with several responsibilities for the PTA volunteer coordinator) but also my daughter Bundle's birthday. And birthday party. And....luckily no new pets were added this year. But it was a party of 4 and 5 year olds. BIG DAY.

I know what you're thinking - why didn't you just make her have her party a different day? I probably should have. I could even have tried to trick her into thinking her birthday was the next day, but you have to know that Bundle's brain would not have gone for that. She wakes up pretty much every morning with an announcement on what day it is before she says anything else. She just orients herself every morning by figuring out what day it is. It's pretty funny. And if you remember, she is very focused on her birthday. All Christmas season long she preferred to talk about her birthday plans rather than the impending visit from the big man in the red suit. She has planned and planned and planned. So when I even mentioned holding a little party for her on a different day, her lip quivered and she quietly said, "But mom, my birthday is on Tuesday June 3rd and so I need to have my party on Tuesday June 3rd." Okay, honey. I can pull it off.

Luckily I was able to convince her to have a small gathering on our back porch instead of following through on any of her other ideas which ranged from the unreasonable (flying to Paris France with 8 of her best friends) to the horrific (Chuck E Cheese). I was so happy when she asked if we could please have a few friends over for a (ready for this?) Fairy Princess Birthday Tea Party. (That was the official title.) We threw together a few invites, sent them off and headed to the dollar store for some cheap decorations.

After spending the morning trying to bring order to the house (possibly a stupid thing to spend time on since we would next be inviting total chaos in the form of birthday guests), Bundle and I created our party room on the pack porch. We had a good time working together.

Then after heading over to the school to watch the last few minutes of the Last Day Assembly and snap pictures of the kids and their awesome teachers, we hurried back home to finish the party preparations.

The best part of the day was that Bitty offered to be my assistant for the party. I was so grateful to her for helping - she was absolutely darling with the little girls. And even better, her dear little friend offered to come help too. So I had two amazing 8 year old assistants. Heaven-sent, I tell you.

The party began with crafts in the corner - fairy wings and crowns. Neither craft ended up working very well but who cares - the time it took for the kids to do their decorating ate up about half of the party time which is really what I'm looking for in any party activity.

Then we herded the gang to the table for tea. Thankfully Bundle was thrilled with just lemonade. For Bitty's party in August I tried to make an herbal tea concoction that the kids might like and it wasn't very popular. These gals ignored the cream puffs and just drank a lot of lemonade.

For a little while we just cranked up some dance music and tried to have a dance party on the back lawn. It turned pretty quickly into just chasing each other around.