Party Time

My little drummer girl

Wednesday night, after her favorite dinner of macaroni and cheese, we braced ourselves for a night of noise and gave Punky her birthday present: a hot pink, electric drum set.  She loved it and entertained us the rest of the evening.  To our surprise, she hasn't really touched it much since.  I think she's just overwhelmed with all the new stuff she has to play with now.  She bounces from one thing to the next, five minutes per activity at most.

We had her actual party yesterday.  My sister and her family planned on coming to spend the night with us for New Year's Eve anyway, so I thought it would be a good idea to have her party while they were here instead of them making another trip this month.  And besides, when we made her wait over three weeks for her birthday party last year, she drove us nuts.

This year I took the easy way out and ordered all the supplies online.  Deciding the theme for the party was a grueling process.  I told Punky it was her decision, and she changed her mind daily for weeks.  We sat in front of the computer three evenings in a row, looking at the same sets of decorations over and over again, and she only reached a decision when I had enough and threatened to cancel her party if she didn't pick something already.  I hope she puts that much thought into choosing a college, career, and boyfriends down the road.  Her choice? Ni Hao Kai-lan.

Of course, I couldn't find a local grocery store that made Kai-lan cakes.  My mom ordered it from a bakery down home, and my sister held it on her lap for over two hours on their ride up so it wouldn't get smushed.  It was a beautiful cake though, and tasty, too.  

The party went well.  We had more food than we knew what to do with, and the same could be said for Punky's present pile.  The highlight of the party was the pinata full of candy and other miscellaneous junk.  No, I wasn't crazy enough to actually blindfold them and give them a stick to swing around aimlessly.  This pinata had pull strings, so they all grabbed a handful and yanked away until it finally burst open.

Everyone was gone well before five, except for my mom who is staying a few days, and we spent the evening cleaning up the mess and assembling new toys.  Just like other years, I put some stuff away for a rainy day.  It's a lot to handle all at once with Christmas and her birthday only three days apart.  She opened enough to keep her busy for quite a while, and it's nice to have some new toys on the side for when boredom strikes.  It worked well in the past, but now she's old enough to remember the things she got and wonder what happened to them.  I think.  Time will tell.