the beginning of birthday madness

I've started referring to the months of September-November as the birthday corridor. Since I am nothing if not a discerning homemaker and the epitome of tact, I hang up the birthday decorations in September, including the banner that reads, "Happy birthday, Eliot!" and I leave them all up--unchanged--through the end of November. I'm sure the gig will be up when Winston or Oskar learns how to read, but it's really quite a time saver now.

For the sake of our sanity, we've decided to do birthday parties only every other year. The other year we do a family dinner and an activity with one friend. This year is a birthday party year. And it's been party central here. (Unfortunately.)

Here is Eliot trying to blow out the firecrackers Rocky keeps buying as candles on her oreo trifle.

The Friday night after her birthday we had all the girls in her class over for a Cupcake Wars party. Since Rocky and I are really not great in German, there was a lot of acting and miming and I'm sure her friends went home wondering why Eliot doesn't have real adults for parents. 

We had to start off the parting by watching an episode of cupcake wars so they knew what it was but it's not offered in German so we settled for Sugar Rush.

 Then we ate pizza outside. I made an adorable charcuterie board that Rocky insisted wouldn't get touched. It didn't. I covered it up with plastic wrap and served it at Oskar's parry the next week--see I am a keen party planner.

Since it's Switzerland and box mixes haven't made it here, I spent the better part of my week making four different flavors of cupcakes. I still have a couple dozen carrot ones in my freezer if anyone is interested. 

After decorating we sent them outside to play night games in the park. At 9 pm Rocky told Eliot to have them call their parents and say they were ready to go home. But since we aren't real adults, Eliot told them (in German) her dad said they could all stay as late as they wanted. Finally at 10:30 pm we kicked them out and started a 6 week mission of trying to clean all the sprinkles off our floor. 

We took all the leftovers to her match tomorrow. 

 We sure love this girl who started our family. She is kind, friendly, intelligent and wonderful to have on your team. But if she ever pulls that prank about telling her friends they can stay as late as they want, there will be serious consequences.