C6's 7th birthday party

This week C6 told me she wanted a party. I mean, sure, I knew she did, but she finally focused and told me who she wanted to come. On Thursday. Birthday on Sunday. I told her the birthday party had to be outside. She balked and reminded me that last year it was inside, but I told her last year it was 95 degrees and about 100% humidity that day.

We haggled a bit, I offered a pool party, she refused. I offered Magruder Park, she refused. I offered Bartlett Park ... and BINGO, we decided we could both live with that. Bartlett Park in Brentwood has a new little water feature that we just discovered and both C6 and Q5 love it. Especially Q5. But C6 loves the whole park enough to say OK to that venue.

So, we looked at the weather and though Saturday the 3rd would be a better party day than Sunday the 4th. C6 wrote up a list of invitees and I started calling. The first two parents I called said that had another party to go to that overlapped our time. So, we changed our time, and went with two to four instead of one to three. Great, two of our invitees could come. C42 called his cousin and invited her children, whoo-hoo, they could come! Our final two invitees were unable to come, one was going out of town for the long weekend and the other was celebrating her birthday at the same exact time. Bummer.

I thought three kids wasn't enough, we went with the wider tier of friends, and invited people I like (well, and that C6 does, too, but hadn't made the narrower list of 5 children). Both big families, so it added 8 children. Gulp!

This was the easiest party ever. We didn't do games, or a craft, or a piñata, or goodie bags. Awesome. I made a cake, made Country Time pink lemonade, C42 bought ice cream and we were done. Of course at this point C42 got a little freaked out because I'd sold him a small party and suddenly 16 children would be there. Well, that's what you get when you invite two families with 4 kids each. A big party! And then, to top it off I'd told C42 just cake. And then I added lemonade (well, you can't have nothing to drink) and then I added ice cream (well, come on. Cake and ice cream go together). And so I looked up the town's website and found nothing about park permits, so phew, we were in luck, and C42 relaxed a tiny bit.

When we got there, the fountain wasn't on. DISASTER. But luckily it seems to turn on exactly at 2:00 as if by magic. So, thank you other child who was having a birthday party today so we had to push ours forward. Or back. Whatever. When it turned 2:00 the water turned on and Q5 went right it.





The party really was just all play. Here is C6 with two of her cousins in the middle of some game.





Once everybody got there C6 went around to ask if everybody was ready for cake. Oh, yes, they were.

C6 has been in a patriotic fervor over the last few months, so after the 4th I bought some red white and blue plates and tealights, which is why C6 has some non-traditional candles on her cake.

C6 blowing out her candles:




Picking the candles off the cake:




And finally serving the cake. C6 did a great job serving everybody before taking a piece herself.

Remember Q5's rainbow cake? Well, I decided to do the same cake for C6's 7th birthday, except red white and blue. This cake is so easy. Yes, it is lots of layers, but they cook in 15-20 minutes because they are so thin!! It takes less time than a regular cake. And you get more frosting!! It does take a lot of frosting.





But because the cake was so tall, I gave everybody a very small piece. 26 pieces in that cake! We went home with one tattered piece. I don't think you could eat much more than one piece, even if there had been extra.

I don't think we left until almost 5:00, everybody happy.