In all the excitement over this weekend’s birthday party, we completely forgot to take any photos of my efforts of the preceding week. Then The Daddy was charged with taking a photo of each child present during the party, and managed that task admirably. Except that many of the children are visible only from behind, or are motion-blurred. I guess the circumstances got the better of all of us :-)

However, the party itself went off almost without a hitch. Ten children turned up, none of whom had not RSVP’d although two who had confirmed were no-shows. They played well together and listened when I rang my captain’s bell. They seemed to have fun. Not one said anything like “is that all you have for party favors? My Mom would have bought much better ones!” or “this is boring!” or “yuck, pizza!”. The treasure hunt was over much more quickly that I expected, thanks to one bright little invitee who it seemed could scan the room with a single flick of her head and pinpoint likely prize locations... but it didn’t matter, we just strung up the pinata before the pizza arrived instead of after.

When the time came to cut the cake the birthday boy was missing. He was located upstairs tearing the packaging off all his presents, such was the excitement. But with a little encouragement he emerged just long enough to blow out the candles and eat a slice of chocolate sponge. Luckily this coincided with the end of party time, so he could call out a goodbye to his guests and go play...

With which I heaved a great sigh of relief, and left the tidying up for the morning.