Monaloca

Melina topped off birthday party season at our house with a bang. Because I joined a moms’ group when she was a newborn, she now has eight little friends whose birthdays are within a month of hers, and three with birthdays within days. Emma’s birthday is just two days after Melina’s, and with the girls swimming together and both being HUGE fans of princesses and pink, I asked her mom if they might want to join forces with a party. In the end we let they girls decide. They “discussed” it during swim class one day and decided that a joint party would be lots of fun.

On to the planning… we soon decided to reserve a park area, and then Queen Mama Anna went straight to work on decorations, putting my enthusiasm to shame. She sewed a “marrying” princess tent (decorative bows and ribbons on a large mosquito net tent), made “throne” coverings for two folding chairs, and started creating castle facades to hang at the park.

Melina insisted on a pinata (check), princess plates and pink party-ware (check), and of course balloons (we put Grandma and Grandpa Weiss on that task, so check!) We had the Beelers over one night for a pizza planning session, divvied up food tasks, and decided to have the “fairy godmother” (Emma’s godmother) do face painting for the kids and my parents to run a craft station.

Melina wanted a princess castle cake, so we started looking at pictures online and brainstorming the best way to make her cake dream come true. A friend of mine found a perfect pattern, right before Anna did a practice run for Emma’s cake. (I wasn’t that organized.) Turns out her practice cake was based on the same 3D, square tower idea as my friend’s pattern, and Melina loved the picture she saw. Outside of needing to buy square cake pans, we were set!

We should have been set. But we’ve had an unusually cold, wet spring this year, and as luck would have it, an unseasonable three-day storm was forecast to land the day before the party. The 20-kid, 25-adult, outdoor-in-a-park, first-weekend-in-June party, a date when rain should not be in the equation. At first we both avoided the thought of a backup plan. We saw 40% chance rain as 60% sun. But then it turned to 60% chance rain, and sudden downpours (sun one minute, sheets of rain the next) earlier in the week made second-guessing the weather a dicey proposition.

We went through a number of different ideas but in the end settled on having the party at Emma’s house, in their lovely basement room and garage that open directly to the backyard. We got lucky: It didn’t rain, and it wasn’t horribly cold. But it did threaten, so we didn’t regret our decision to forgo the park. All our little princesses (and a few princes and knights) had a wonderful time, and each got a chance to hit the pinata once before it was broken open by biggest-kid Kai.

In what Joey calls the ultimate princess move, Melina refused to wear a princess dress to her dress-up party and instead chose a new T-shirt from Grandma Rapoza and a pink tutu. She wanted to wear jammies. I told her she could save that idea for her fifth birthday party, and amazingly she agreed.

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