Queen Eleanor turns six

Eleanor's cake, decorated by BobThe air is leaking out of the balloons, and I'm feeling pretty much the same. We decided early on in the parenting gig to have birthday parties at home rather than going the swimming- ­­bowling­­- McDonald's­­- younameit expensive route, but boy are they a lot of work. At least, I tend to set myself up for way too much prep work; but it does make for good parties, and I haven't had a bomb yet. It also gets the house clean. This year, Eleanor wanted a princess party, but since she was inviting boys, we compromised on a medieval-slash-fairytale theme. The invitations were printed on half-lengthwise paper and rolled up, used Black Chancery font, and read as follows:

Crown

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

You are hereby Summoned

to the Court of

Queen Eleanor Patey

to join with her in

Feasting and Revelry

in Celebration of her

Sixth Birthday.

Costumes encouraged!

The Festivities begin at 2 of the Clock

on the afternoon of Saturday,

The Eighth of April,

Anno Domini Two Thousand and Six.

The Royal Court

is to be found at

(address)

Please address regrets to

The Grand High Chancellor

also known as Heather

at (phone)

or hpatey at nfld dot com

Castle

I found Posteriza and printed a big dragon poster and a dozen flames on card stock, for the endlessly variable Pin the X on the Y. Bob made a cardboard castle wall for a fishpond. Then it got ridiculously labour-intensive as I wanted some rules for an interactive fish-pond game that would keep the whole group involved, not waiting in line. I thought of something like Crazy Eights, but as follows: beforehand we printed several dozen shields with simple designs and coloured them with two-colour combinations: red-yellow, orange-white, etc., all different. The backstory was that the shields belonged to armies come to fight for the Queen, and they needed to join up with a warlord to fight under. I handed out one shield to each child to begin. Jean, the patient and helpful older sister, loaded the fishing rod with one shield per fisher; if the retrieved shield matched any in the fisher's 'army' by one of the colours or by design, he or she could keep it, but if not, it had to be given away to someone who did have a match - recipient chosen by the giver. This kept everyone on the alert for shields that were being given away, and generated excitement at each retrieval. It wasn't quite fair in that those who got more shields tended to keep getting more, but it wasn't hopeless for those who didn't get some right away, so that was all right; this lasted at least twenty minutes, which is a long time for a kids' game.

The rest was pretty straightforward. There was a balance-beam 'drawbridge' to cross before they got into the kitchen to eat, but six-year-olds have no trouble with walking on a one-by-three laid on the floor, so we have to make that harder next time! There were little pizzas, happy-face fries, fruit, cheezies and pretzels to eat, and Bob did a wonderful job on the cake as usual. (Eleanor sketched the prototype herself.) I also got several large handfuls of chocolate coins - Jean was in charge of hiding them in the living room during the meal, and everyone got ziplock bags to fill and add to their loot bags, made up of the usual small junky toys and a bit of candy. (Bulk Barn has small Rice Krispy squares, individually wrapped, six for a dollar!) Eleanor was pretty happy with the whole proceedings, although since we didn't get around to opening the presents until after some people had left, I made her wait until they were all gone except the Bauers, which was not popular but accepted after a fashion. She got sent to her room, though, when, after being asked to pick up the wrapping paper and candy wrappers, she said, "It's MY birthday! Why do I have to do all the work, aren't you going to do any?" Sugar insanity is not good for parent-child relations. Keep that up, missy, and you'll be lucky to get a doughnut with a candle next year. Unless, of course, I get any more clever game ideas I want to try out.

There are a few Flickr pictures, for friends-n-family.