Kiss My Knits!

Em decided to put on a fancy party dress and jewelry, and also to put her hair up. In spite of her dour expression here, she really was excited. Note the picture to the right of her eagerly awaiting her first guest. We had a last minute cancellation, so only three people showed. But hey, that was fine. I planned a couple of activities at the last minute, so I ran out to get posterboard about an hour before showtime. While I was out, I also got cupcakes and ice cream. Unfortunately, at this point I didn’t know that we’d had cancellations, so I overbought. Later, I’ll be taking cupcakes and ice cream to a friend with two sons.


I put on some Em-friendly music as guests arrived. (NOTE: At this point, I was going to publish that playlist as an iMix so you could see the songs. Instead, I just deleted the entire playlist. Grrrrrr.) I said, “Hey, I had an idea. I thought we could make a target, then blow up balloons, not tie them off, and let them to try to hit the target.” They really liked this idea, particularly after I blew one balloon, let it go, and it shot around the room. You had to stand about two feet from the target to get it to hit, but really, the point was just to watch your balloon fly all over the place.

They did that for a while, then someone asked what other games we had. I said, “I thought we could play pin the tail on the donkey. But you know, I don’t think it needs to be a donkey. What else could we pin something on?” I got the posterboard while they discussed it, and they decided on “pin the neck on the giraffe.” Creative! One of our guests said that you had to spin the person playing around the number of years old they were going to be, so everybody got spun around nine times. I tried this later, at the end of the party, and I only made it around about five times before I had no clue where I was. The girls were apparently in the same boat. There was much laughing as necks were pinned on bodies and such. They were also very nice about reorienting any girls who were way off so they would at least hit the poster. I appreciated it, because the Scotch tape took some of the paint off the closet door. Oh well.

Pinata time! We didn’t have anyplace to do this indoors, so we had to go outside. Unfortunately, it was about 51 degrees with a high wind advisory, which meant it felt like it was in the 40s and the wind was really whipping. Everybody was super-excited about the pinata, though, so we had to do it. Apparently there are two kinds of pinata. The kind where there are strings hanging down, and everybody gets to pull a string, and one of them makes the bottom fall out. Then there’s the traditional kind that you just beat the tar out of until it releases its sugary goodness. We opted for the “beat the tar out of” variety. So, armed with Emily’s pink baseball bat, the girls each took a turn swinging until they connected. They were stronger than the string, which we had to re-tie a couple of times. It didn’t break, so we scored the pinata pretty heavily and they each took another whack. It still didn’t break. They were getting all goose-pimply on their legs, so finally we suggested just stomping on it. Their little eyes lit up with glee.

They screamed and swarmed on that thing, Lord of the Flies style, and kicked and stomped it until it finally gave way. It was like watching a bunch of very cute soccer hooligans. Fortunately, the candy and treats inside weren’t harmed. They each grabbed as much as they could and ran back inside.


Then, on to cupcakes and ice cream! The girls all shouted, “YAY!” A dozen cupcakes and two quarts of ice cream meant everybody got some and we were left with WAY too much food. The cupcakes were frosted to look like dogs’ faces. Very cute. After the food, gifts were opened. Emily got some very nice presents, and made sure to say “thank you.” We’ve got to work on getting that “thank you” nice and loud so everybody can hear it.


I think her two favorite things were some little ballerinas to put together out of wire, and a Playmobil mermaid king and queen. She had a mermaid princess, so that completes the family set. As you can see, they are visiting Noah’s ark, which goes nicely with the oceanic theme.

Time elapsed: about an hour and a half. I think we could have gone longer with no problem, since we had to kind of rush the giraffe picture a little to get to the much desired pinata and cupcakes.

Near the end, one of the girls said, “There weren’t very many people at this party.” I said, “That’s true, but I hope that everybody had a good time. Did you have fun?” And everybody enthusiastically shouted, “YEAH!”

My daughter’s been wanting to have people over, and she’s been wanting to have a party. Yesterday, I made both of these things happen. All I did was clean the house and throw a small party for four kids, but I swear, I feel like Queen Mom. Everybody in my family won yesterday. It’s a good feeling.