Cakes and Parties and Three-Year-Olds, Oh My!

This exhausted chica needs to get herself to bed, but first I wanted to hop on quickly to share some photos from Lucy's birthday week. Her actual birthday was on Wednesday - cupcakes for breakfast, presents after school/work, and dinner out. And her birthday party was on Saturday, at a local park with a picnic shelter I was able to reserve through the county park system. We eyed the weather from the moment the 10-day forecast was in range - it went from sunny and 75, to cloudy-ish in the 60's, to the low 50's with a 50% chance of rain. Things were not looking good, but luckily the rain held off until just after the party, and the temperature was just cold enough to let the kids feel comfortable running all over the place (as opposed to the super hot they normally get as they burn off their enviable stores of energy).

Did everything go perfectly? No, of course not. And I wish I wasn't rushing around like a crazy person trying to MAKE everything perfect - I need to get better at accepting that perfection, aka the meticulously detailed over-the-top events you can find on any lifestyle blog, is not really "perfect." All the time and effort that one has to put into the littlest of details may make for pretty photos, but it doesn't allow for much quality time with the ones that matter most, in this case, the birthday girl. So I went with a lot of store-prepared food, we were light on decorations, and there were no homemade touches in the favors. But I'm more than OK with that, in retrospect, and I'm thinking that next time I throw a party for one of my kids, I'll outsource even more.

Though it was kind of fun making the cake. In a weird, masochistic way.

Here is Lucy getting a glimpse of her main birthday present from us - bedding to go on her new big girl bed. Including Princess sheets, as she has been insisting that she have a "Princess" bed.

We needed a light we could plug in to the outlet connected to the light switch, which unfortunately is located right next to the only place we could put Lucy's bed. To get around the need for a table, we opted for a lantern that hangs from the ceiling - I think it looks pretty cute!

This picture of the "other side" of her room gives you a sense of how tiny her room is!

This cake... Oh, how I slaved over this cake. I baked the top layer on Tuesday, the bottom layer on Wednesday, put the "crumb" layer of frosting on the cake on Thursday, and finished frosting and decorating on Friday. A four day effort. My mixer may never recover. But awesome, right? I'm a little proud of myself.

BTW, the cake topper and princesses were ordered from Amazon.com

Ariel had crazy eyes.

The back looked, admittedly, a little wonky. Eh. You can't win 'em all.

The cake in position at the party.

The birthday girl blowing out her candles.

Happy face.

Eating the frosting. Because that's all she ate, of course, as usual.

Four days of effort, and after ten minutes of cake slicing, it looked like this.

The party favors - little goodies stuffed into beach buckets. Would have been a bit more "on theme" if the weather wasn't quite so wintry.

Finn had a great time running ALL OVER THE PLACE.

I made this banner. Lots of cutting, gluing, swearing. And that was BEFORE it got all tangled up. Untangling it and hangin it was a three-man effort, and it didn't go up until about 20 minutes after the official start of the party. But now that it's made, you can be damn sure I'll be bringing this thing out for every single birthday until she's at least 18. I may make her bring it with her to college, so much effort did I put in to this thing.

THREE! My baby is three.

But she still fell asleep on my lap tonight as I rocked her in her bedroom rocking chair. Even though she barely fit, I still have that, for a little bit longer.