Lyla's 5th Birthday Party

This year I decided to have a preschool friends party for Lyla. We'd been to several parties for friends and I figured I shouldn't let my desire for less work get in the way of my little girl having a party like her friends. So, I went the (seemingly) easy route. My plan was to have the preschool class go to the park after preschool one day, play, and eat cake and ice cream. That was it. Easy, right? Well, I also decided to make the cake myself b/c I really do try to spend as little as possible (really, Eric!). But the cake design Lyla liked came from familyfun.com. It looked easy enough. You just use different candies to make the picture. Our theme was monkey this year. Mainly because Lyla is a big monkey. Anyway, the cake took much longer to prepare than I thought it would because all the candy had to be squeezed, rolled, and manipulated into the shapes that I needed. Eric helped, thank goodness, but my hands were very sticky after a very long time of squeezing tootsie rolls and starbursts. Lyla liked it though.

I took everything for the party with me to preschool that morning. We went straight to the park after school. There is a large picnic area at the park that was completely empty so I set up in there. As soon as I had all of the kids come sit down for cake, a parks department worker drove up and said I had to move because he needed to clean the pavilion for a group coming at 5:30pm that day. It was 3pm at the time. He said he couldn't wait even 10 minutes for them to eat cake because he had to get back to his office to clock out before 4:30pm. Huh? You can't wait 10 minutes? Really? He was not very nice about it either. I was completely embarrassed as all of the moms stood and watched me get in trouble with the mean parks dude. So, he made me move all 20 kids to a sidewalk to eat cake! They had to sit on the sidewalk and hold their plates in their lap. I was so flustered I forgot to give out the ice cream. Then I forgot to sing happy birthday to Lyla before handing out the cake, which didn't have candles either!!! Mother of the Year, I know!

Anyway, we also had a monkey pinata, which didn't have enough candy in it either. But, at the end of the day, the kids didn't care about any of the frustrating mishaps of the party. One mom later told me that her son liked Lyla's party over a Pump It Up party! I guess that means it was a success in the eyes of a bunch of 5 year olds! That's what matters, even though I was completely stressed, embarrassed and frustrated by the whole thing. That stinkin' parks dude made me so mad. My heart is racing just typing the story.

When we finally got home we let Lyla open her presents. She was very excited!!! She received a lot of great presents! Thank you to all of her friends for coming. She had a great time!

Here are the pictures. The first picture is of the picnic table we were GOING to eat on before the mean dude came along. Notice how terribly dirty (sarcasm here) the pavilion is!!! After he made us leave he used a leaf blower to blow out the INVISIBLE leaves on the ground and then left! He seriously "cleaned" for about 5 minutes. Here is the monkey cake I made.

One of the kids' big sisters were kind enough to push the kids on this big swing for a long time. They were so cute. They were yelling and raising their arms like they were on a roller coaster! I love their faces...pure joy! (you can click on the pictures individually to see them bigger)

Look how far back Lyla was swinging that bat! That girl goes full force!

After every kid wacked the pinata 3 times I had to rip open the pinata and dump the candy.

At home opening presents. Yes, she's in her pajamas and it's about 4:00pm.

These were walkie talkies. She was very excited about them. Her and Grace have had fun playing with these!