Happy Birthday Claire!

Claire's birthday was yesterday. We spent the morning making the cake and decorating the table. My dad helped out by taking Sammy downtown for the morning. The city dyes the river green for St. Patricks day and there is a parade, so they had a grand ole' time. And we had a grand time not dealing with a 3 year old who is trying to take licks of the frosting all morning.

Claire had originally requested a Princess birthday, but she hasn't played anything resembling "princess" since she was 3 or 4! I think she just remembers having a princess birthday one time and remembers it being beautiful or fancy or something, so now she's stuck on that as a theme. I managed to turn it into a "fairy" birthday instead, which then turned into a "garden fairy" theme, which then turned into a "garden" theme...so we basically ended up with flowers. Thank goodness...I'm so tired of the princess stuff.

Claire's old teacher sent a bouquet which sealed the deal! They were very pretty and were perfect for the center of the table.

Claire and I looked at pictures of cakes online, and she found one with a big letter "C" on it, so she decided that's what she wanted. Grammy helped us with the frosting because mommy was a little lame on Saturday with a giant grease burn on her arm.....poor me. I'll show you a picture of that beautiful scar later.

Here is the pinata we got. Luckily, they now have pinatas where you pull a string which releases the candy instead of having to beat it with a stick. I learned my lesson the hard way when we got a unicorn pinata for Claire's 3rd birthday and all the kids ended up in tears when the unicorn head went flying across the room. Rookie mistake. We did not beat the butterfly.

Here are Claire's friends and a few moms...all the usual kiddos: Cecilia, Annabel, the curly-haired siblings, etc.

Here is Claire with her buddy Sonia. I didn't get too many pictures once the party started. And most of them were blury anyway. The girls painted door-knockers and made bead necklaces with pipe cleaners and beads. Both crafts were very easy for the kids to do by themselves...another lesson I've learned the hard way: don't set up a craft that kids can't do without a lot of parental supervision. This way, the kids are busy alone and the moms can actually take a little break. I'll have to admit: Sonia's mom and I even opened a bottle of wine and even my mom admited that a glass of wine really does seem to help a kid birthday go smoothly! I concur.