Annie's birthday

We came from the Mette family Christmas late Saturday night. Sunday we tried to pull the house together and had the core team come after dinner. Monday was clean up from that, taking down Christmas decorations, grocery shopping, making horchata, baking Annie's cake, and printing out Annie's 5 year photobook. Monday as we go to bed, it is clear Annie has pink eye. Tuesday was Annie's birthday. I look online and of course it is highly contagious and requires antibiotics. I was worried we would have to cancel her party, nevermind the fact that we had been working on projects for it all day. I happened to have a tube of prescription cream left over from when Cecilia has a bacterial eye infection from a clogged tear duct. Immediately I wrestle Annie to the floor and apply the vaseline-like ointment to her eye. This requires re-application every three hours and then she should be not contagious in 24 hours... which was about her party time. We were expecting over 20-30 guests.

We had decided over a month ago that Annie would have a fiesta birthday party and ordered some decorations from oriental trading. I had felt guilty that Annie never got a nice party since her birthday is sandwiched between the Christmas and New Year. I had looked on-line at party idea and had decided on these:

- a pull-string pinata. Where strings are hung from the bottom and one is attached to a trap door so toddlers just pick a string instead of swinging a bat around.

- making horchata (mexican rice milk) and quesadillas, burritos, rice, and beans

- having everyone learn a new spanish phrase and see how frequently or how originally they can work it into conversation

- giving the adults a spanish vocab quiz

- learning the mexican hat dance

- making flowers out of tissue paper for a centerpiece or girls' hair.

- Michael also added a photo contest using our party mascots, juan and juanita, cardboard flaminco dancers

I had tried endlessly to convince Annie to request a fiesta themed cake. I scoured pictures on the internet. I showed her hat shaped cakes, cactus shaped cakes, cakes shaped like little mexican men, cakes with maracas on them, etc. However, when showing her those cakes, one of the pages had a cake in her favorite colors, pink and purple, with little disney princess dolls on top. She insisted that was the one that she wanted. It looked simple enough to make, so I just had to convince Michael that is was her birthday and the point was to give her something special that she would enjoy. I had baked the cake and put the initial layer of pink frosting. All I had to do that day was to make a little rolled fondant top like a table skirt and add the princesses to the top. I did not have the right ingredients for the fondant, so that took a trip to the store. Then it did not get to the right consistency, so it cracked and was overall hard to work with and frustrating.

Michael had to work most of the day and did not get off work until the time the party was supposed to start, so he offered to help for an hour or so. he helped hang the mexican banner decoration and then left. I filled the pinata and did the cake. By the time the cake was done I was pretty frustrated and tired.

As the babies are waking up from their nap, Annie came to inform me that she was trying to untangle the strings from the pinata, and that 3 of them had fallen off, but no candy fell out. She brings me downstairs to show me and repeats, "see here is where they were, but no candy fell out." At that point she looks down and sees 3 pieces of candy on the floor and changes her statement to, "oh... 3 pieces of candy fell out" I look and sure enough she had broken the once string that was linked to the trap door. I had to empty the pinata and tape the broken pieces and re-fill it. I just crossed my fingers that the packing tape would hold the candy in without making it impossible to break.

I had to wrestle Annie every three hours to apply eye cream. The girls were restless. I decided that the point of the party was to have fun and not to make me frustrated and yell at my kids, so it was not big deal if I did not get the games finished up - we could just visit, etc. It was a beautiful 50 degree day, so I let the girls play outside. At that point there was a little disagreement about whose turn it was to use our one working bicycle. We had actually bought Annie a new bike for her birthday, so since it was such a nice day we all went up to Michael's work to pick it up and give it to her before the party.

Then I had to clean the house up. It was still a near disaster from traveling back and forth from Effingham 2 times in the previous week. Bob, Stacy, and Nicole showed up at 5:00, which was just enough time to help me tidy up and finish the quesadillas, which I wanted to be hot by 6:00. I had not gotten the quiz or the spanish phrases printed out, but oh well. Michael came home from work and tried to help finalize plans. He recommends scrapping the vocab games, i say that is fine. I feed the baby and put make up on.

What I neglected to account for was the fact that, although this party fell between the holidays, it was a weekday party. That means everyone shows up late and has to leave early. So, about 7 PM we started the party.

Annie had recently watched a movie about a surprise birthday party. She had told me all week that when her guest arrive she would be playing in her room and when they were all there she would walk down and we would all yell "surprise!" Well, grandma and grandpa arriving early messed up the whole playing in her room thing. However, she remembered as soon as we were ready to serve dinner, so we sent her to her room and called her downstairs, where we were all waiting (in the same spots where she just saw us, of course) to tell "surprise!"

Then we ate dinner and explained the photo contest. We served cake and ice cream (At this point all the other girls and myself has crusty stuff forming in the corners of our eyes). We broke the pinata. It worked marvelously, broken by the last kid on the second-last string. By that time it was 8:30, which was after all the kids' bedtimes. Michael was pushing to judge the contest and open presents so people could head out. So, during present opening, some of the kids were getting changed into pajamas for their drive home. We judged the contest, where we were hoping to get rid of a coffee cup shaped planter that we had received as a gift (which we believe was already a re-gift), but alas I won the contest, so we got to keep the planter. We had nearly run out of time for the hat dance, but I had asked a friend to come teach it, so she taught it very quickly. All the kids were too inattentive by that time, so the circle consisted of Annie and 6 other adults. We learned just one verse and we were done. The party was over.

Overall it was a success. The cake turned out OK. The food was raved about. The kids all played together and had fun. The adults took silly photos with Juan and Juanita. Annie got some great gifts. After everyone left, we let Annie stay up until midnight playing with Trinity (aren't sisters great) and finally watching a movie. We all slept soundly and woke up the next day, new year's eve, with pink eye (with the exception of Michael).