Long Time No See....

Sorry we have been so conspicuously absent for the last two weeks. It seems that between my folks' visit and Princess M's Birthday extravaganza, I have had no extra time to collect my thoughts. Much less write them down, edit them, add pictures, edit them again, and then just say "what the heck" and press Publish Post.... Now everything seems so past tense, it feels odd to still be sharing it with you. However, since some of our favorite people in Kentucky, England, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland couldn't be here to party with us, I will share with you a couple of the 286 (no lie) pictures I took at an all afternoon Birthday soiree. This rapid shutter photography is going to run us out of computer memory and external hard drive space quickly at this rate.... Of course, it has nothing to do with my lack of discrimination as a photographer. Doesn't everyone take 10-15 shots of the same scene hoping to get one worthy shot to post or share?

We started the shindig with the delivery of the Pink and Purple Bounce Castle at 10am. The last child unwillingly climbed out at 6pm when Mr. Bouncy insisted he must return the Castle to Salinas. The kids were sorry to see it go, C, not so much. His love for all things safe and orderly was definitely tested with an afternoon full of roughly thirty kids ranging from age 1 to age 13 and a couple of us in our late 30ish years testing the rules on bounce house capacity. We had brought along our own small version, allegedly for the "small" kids. You can imagine how that worked out. The small tykes were most often right in the middle of the big bouncy with a mere dozen other kids doing pikes and pile drivers all around them. The small bouncy was full of ambitious boys trying to dive over the sides.
This is only 6 kids, right?

Let me out, please?


As I said, FUN was had by all. C had his fun when we made an adult run to the Mini Mart after the crowd dwindled down to the most hearty of friends and cleanup crew.

We did learn one other invaluable lesson. When you invite an entire class of 23 Kindergartners and their families, including siblings, to an all afternoon birthday luncheon, DO NOT, for any reason have a real (aluminum bat required) pinata. The bat was actually not the problem, no small thanks to my friend Beth, who repeatedly risked life and limb to jump in the fray and wrestle an aluminum bat from a blindfolded, swinging, sugar-hyped kid.
The problem was eventually (after we finally let the 13 year old take a swing) the pinata will break. At this point, I cannot describe the chaos that ensued... Suffice to say, if I had not had an extra jumbo bag of goodies on the side, they're might have been a mutiny. For all future parties, pinatas are for ten or less small, hogtied children.
That's my girl!


Ultimately, the birthday girl decreed the party a TOTAL smash success. That was more than enough repayment for the ten+ hours my Dad and I spent chopping and mixing to feed the masses. Incidentally, 66 cupcakes was exactly 1 cupcake too many... Party ON!