Zhyoonicorn party

On Saturday we had Emily's 4th birthday party. It was technically a unicorn-themed party, but she still has some funny little speech hangups and pronounces it as "zhyoonicorn". I will be sad when that little quirk goes away.

We had gorgeous weather, much to my relief.
Emily wanted to have her party at the park where she had it last year, and it's always very nerve-wracking at that instant that you finally commit and send out invitations for something that might very well get rained out at the last minute. Maybe that's why I didn't actually send the invitations until about a week before the party. Oops. Except that I kind of do that every year.

As usual, I freaked out about how many people I was going to invite. Practically all of our family lives in the area, all the way up to Emily's Great Great Grandmother, which is wonderful, but it makes parties difficult because as soon as I've invited all the family members I already have a guest list of 50 people. Preschool added a new element to consider, because with each preschool friend I invited there was a possibility of 2 parents and 1-2 siblings coming along as well, which adds up REALLY fast. Emily has not been invited to any of her preschool friends' birthday parties, and I got all indignant about it and was perhaps even heard to declare that I was going to invite EVERYONE in Emily's class to make them feel bad for not inviting her (why yes I am very mature) but I've been forced to eat some humble pie because when it came time to actually sit down and plan everything out I realized wow. That's a lot of kids. So I slowly, painfully paired our guest list down, and this time several core family members couldn't make it anyway, so we ended up with a very manageable party and all of my worry and lamenting that drove everyone around me nuts was for naught*

The cake got finished in time, and people actually ate it even though it was whole wheat. It probably helped that the frosting was not a bit healthy. I have yet to figure out how to healthify frosting and still end up with something that you can decorate with.
My wonderful family, as usual, helped me set up and clean up, sometimes at great personal risk
Even though I couldn't find the candles for her cake, it was a nice party.







After the party, we went to get Emily her present from Mommy and Daddy, which was her first bike. I was all for heading to Toys R Us and buying a $30 bike to present to her during present-opening time, but Will was adamant that we needed to take her with us to a REAL bike store and make an event out of it. It was a nice idea, but what really happened was that after the party was over we laid around until about 5:45 recovering, then realized that the bike place closes at 6 on Saturdays and had to throw everyone into the car and make a mad dash to the store. They only had one bike that was her size anyway, and predictably both girls were wailing within minutes of entering the store, so Will ran out the door with a screaming flailing girl under each arm while I remained behind to pay for her bike...which we brought home and Emily refused to ride, instead prefering her scooter she got for her 3rd birthday.


She'll learn to ride her bike someday, I'm sure. But for now no one has enough energy to teach her how.

*As an aside, I will mention that I have realized and hope to address the fact that it is about 90% disorganization that makes me freak out about everything so much (the rest is most likely neuroses). I want to be the mom who makes awesome cupcakes for her daughter to take to school on her birthday and throws well-planned birthday parties and does thoughtful things for people, and while I am just barely managing to do these things, it it stressful for me. Since I am so disorganized I feel like I am always living my life with everything on the verge of disaster, so doing anything above and beyond the norm is extremely stressful because while I am focusing on a project, everything around me DOES then end up falling into disaster. It would also help if I weren't totally lazy. I think some scheduling and menu planning would be extremely helpful, so I am going to try to implement both of those things as a start. I have to start somewhere, because "Do everything better" and "Be organized" aren't very helpful things to put on my to-do list. I would love to entertain more and look forward to events and engagements with excitement instead of the feeling of "OH MY GOD I still have so much work to do for this!!!!" I've always been awesome at procrastination, so this will take a lot of work, but I really do want to try to improve in this area.