Saturday, October 10, 2009

Star Wars Six






Liam's birthday party extravaganza was today, capping off a week of birthdaying and celebration. This year, pirates had given way to another force... Star Wars. And how. The child has three ships, tons of figurines, star wars books.... you name it. He's stoked. Currently, a few hours after the dozen or so little people who swarmed through the house today left, he is in his room devising elaborate adventures between good and evil. It's fascinating to watch.

It's been a very dramatic week around here, but it seems that the birthday festivities came together with little drama, thankfully. On Wednesday, we had our friends Martin, Heather and their son Lukas, Martin's mother, Ruth, Thane, Rowyn and Frida, who's birthday is also Oct. 7, over. We had hamburgers, salad, and cupcakes. Yum.

I also got to do my first drive-by cupcaking in the classroom on Wednesday - which was also my first real opportunity to hang out in Liam's class since he started school. It's amazing and his teacher is a wonder. How she wrangles all those kids all day, every day, is a mystery to me. I'm pretty sure I would rather work at McDonalds - not that there's anything wrong with that.

Today, we set about transforming the living room into outer space. Balls were spray painted, others were wrapped with tinfoil and hung from the ceiling. The sliding glass doors were covered with fabric, the lights turned down, and a star hung from the ceiling. My sister carefully folded a dozen paper starships for kids to decorate. Good stuff.

Then people started to descend. At this point, when you invite 7 or 8 friends, you wind up with lots more than that because of little kids, etc. But this crowd was almost perfect - everyone seemed to find a place they played happily in, and they all spent quite a bit of time outside, despite grim weather.

The highlight was for sure the cake. Matt had recently gone overnight to Soldotna, and came back with a lot of characters - Darth Vader, R2D2, a bunch of these guys. They were placed on the cake, which was an outer space setting, with a cave for Yoda. Liam was blown away. Seriously. His expression was a trip. Too funny.

Then presents (I forgot to add the "don't spend all your hard-earned money on gifts" disclaimer.) and outside for a treasure hunt.

Then, 2.5 hours after it started, the crew trailed out the door, properly sugared, etc. I can't tell you how tired I am now - seriously, I would gladly sit here and not get up for the rest of the night, except for that silly thing about dinner and getting kids to bed and all that stuff. Sigh.

But I would call the day a success. He's a happy kid.