Jackie's Birthday Bash

Set your mind back to the last weekend in September. The weather was warm. The calendar said it was fall, but it still felt like summer. Right now it is snowing and that warm weekend seems like long gone - even it it was less than two weeks ago. Anyway - it was great weekend for Jackie's 5th birthday. I have finally downloaded the pictures, so hear is a be-lated birthday weekend report.

Jackie's birthday theme this year was " A Costume Party". How is that different from her "dress-up party" last year? Well, not very, which was a challenge for me - since I crave novelty. It was a little different, since last year we had like 10 princesses and 1 skeleton. This year, with a different title, we had princesses, a couple of movie stars, an evil queen, a witch and Batman ( year in and year out - Logan is the only boy).

Jackie, as you can see - still ended up dressing princessy - though technically her dress had wings ( which she took off right at the beginning) and was marketed as a goddess fairy costume at our neighbourhood Zellars. She had been planning on being a china girl, then a cat (which sparked a last minute trip to the store for cat ears) then changed her mind when she saw this dress. I bought it for her even though she needs a new princess dress like she needs a hole in the head. ( When I said that Alice said: hmmmm, that means she doesn't need the dress right - because no one need a hole in their head. And Jackie said: but this one has golden on it and wings!) We'll see if she actually wears it for Halloween as planned.

Jackie wanted a chocolate cake shaped as a ghost - which was easy enough. Though a few days before the party she learned that one of her new friends from school doesn't like chocolate cake, so requested vanilla cupcakes as well (with strawberry icing). We also made lemon cupcakes for her to take to school on Monday for a birthday treat. Thanks mom for making the cake for the family party - I was all caked out.

Decorations were kind of sparse - since we ended up driving around the morning of the party to buy a new costume - I did manage to surprise her with the Happy 5th Birthday Banner which she liked. Here the kids are posing in front of it. Logan is holding the present he gave her. He was proud of it and she does like it a lot. I think this picture is super cute because Batman is so excited about a ballerina barbie

The highlight of the party was the pinata. It added fun, excitement, sugar and an element of danger to the party. Luckily there were no real injuries - only near misses and close calls. I have never bought a pinata before and didn't know what to expect. The thing did not disappoint and took a whole lot of beating before it finally came down.

On Sunday we had a family party. Thanks everyone for coming over. Don't the girls look happy to be hangin with their coolest aunt and coolest uncle. All in all, a good weekend. Andrew said at the end of it all, " that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be". Now I don't have to worry about a birthday until Andrew turns 34 in January. That party should be a lot less work, though, since he liked Jackie's party so much, he may decide he wants one like it...and we can finally do the Star Trek murder mystery dinner I got for a dollar at value village....