I had to delay the party a week because he was sick. Then Asher and I got really sick. Joseph and Akiko also got sort of sick. We were kind of a mess for a couple weeks.
The night before the delayed party it looked like Moses' fever was back. He just fell asleep early and was covered in warm blankets. Scared me for a minute. I, however, felt like garbage. I decided to wait till the morning of the party to see how I was feeling before I called things off again. I felt slightly better when I woke up. Only slightly.
Because we'd all been feeling so terrible for the last while, I barely got things done in time for the party. In fact, I was kind of glad I had the extra week to get ready. I decided to keep it low key and simple. I mean, we were entertaining four year-olds, so it worked out really well.
Moses has themes planned for his birthday parties for the next several years. I suppose this has to do with the fact that, for the first time in the history of our little family, Akiko had a themed party with all her friends over earlier this year (which I failed to blog about, sorry!) and it was very successful. We've always just had a low key have-the-family-over-for-dinner-and-presents affair. Both the kids had so much fun at Akiko's party, that Moses immediately started planning his next several themed parties.
I talked him into having a robot theme this year. I thought it would be easy to find cute decorations and trinkets for the goody bags and stuff and was finding tons of cute ideas online. But, since Halloween was over, the stores already had all their Christmas stuff out and I had trouble finding much of anything robot-y. I managed to eek by and find what I needed, though, after many trips to many stores while this sick mama towed her sick kids along.
I didn't take a whole lot of pictures during the party because I was really busy helping and playing with the kids, but I'll show you what I got.
We started out with robot coloring pages and decorating cardboard robot forms while we waited for everyone to arrive. When the kids were done coloring and I was sure nobody else was showing up, we played a few games.
I've got a cute little robot stamp and put him under a projector to blow him up and traced him onto a posterboard. I left his cassette tape blank and made other colorful ones out of cardstock so the kids could play "Pin the Cassette onto the Robot." I couldn't find any of my bandanas, but found that a black beanie pulled over the face works just as well. I also made nuts and bolts out of cardboard for extra decoration.
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| As the Birthday Boy, Moses got to go first. |
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| Some of our friends got a little turned around. |
Now that the robot had his music, we turned on some robot-like techno music and played, what I'll call, "Dance Robot Freeze" where the kids dance to the music and when the music stops they have to freeze. If they keep moving, they have to sit out. We played a few rounds of that. It was fun watching these little kids try to robot dance. One kid got really into it and was a pretty good robot dancer.
After that, we played musical chairs, since we already had the music cued and everything. No explanation needed there, right?
Then it was time for cake and ice cream. Now, I love to bake, but my cake decorating skills are lacking. Thank heavens Parenting had me covered. They've got all sorts of cute and easy cakes that you just have to follow the directions for. Here's how our guy turned out:
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| I'm sure I could have done a better job, but I was a little pressed for time. I am still pleased with the outcome, though. |
Afterwards, we opened presents, where my camera, which actually hasn't totally died just yet, started acting wacky again. Once presents were done, we let the kids run loose in the house till their parents came.
Moses was super pleased that he finally got to celebrate his birthday and have his robot cake. On the day of his actual birthday, we were all sick and stayed home from church, but we still tried to make it as special as we could. Akiko really wanted to make gyoza for dinner, but we just didn't have it in us. I made curry instead, which Moses loves, but Akiko hates (Gasp! Is she really my daughter?!). Joseph made him a chocolate cake. Moses was really upset at the time that it wasn't the robot cake that was promised to him. It took many minutes to reassure him that he would get his cake when his friends came over.
I wanted the cake to be a surprise for Moses and tried to keep him out of the kitchen while I worked on it. We tried to send him outside or let him play video games, but he kept coming around to the kitchen and hovering. I finally let him see it while Akiko was putting on the finishing touches. He was thrilled.
At times, it felt like this party wasn't meant to happen. You know, like, when everything seems to be going against you when you're trying to accomplish what should be a simple task. But we did it, and it worked out. And as far as I know, nobody that came to our party got sick because of us. Let's hope it stays that way.
By the way, we're all feeling much better this week.
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