Where's My Cape?: girl

Or, another interpretation....

We were in the car today, driving, when Boy starts his monkey-hyena-puppy hybrid whining act. You know, the kind where he's pointing at an empty wrapper of SOMETHING HE JUST INHALED IN ONE SECOND saying Eh-Eh-Eh-Eh! Then there's some more pointing and more whining and more pointing and more whimpers and my brain was like, ENOUGH.

So, I summoned all my patience, turned around from the front passenger seat, smiled, and then made the imaginary motions of zipping up my lips, turning the key, and throwing the key somewhere far away from this hemisphere. Mm!

Girl, who had been chanting, "Boy! CHILL!" started imitating my motions happily.

Then, putting it all into words, said, "First, you cut off the lips. Then, you throw them in the trash!"

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Clearly not my child

Knock-knock

Who's there?

Eyeball

(end of joke)

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Welcome to the Jungle

The Girl turned four yesterday. It was also the day of El Birthday Party Supremo. (Can you tell I took AP Spanish?)

As I alluded to earlier, the theme this year was the hybrid jungle safari special. This is the kind of safari that takes place in two continents simultaneously in order to maximize the exotic animals that can be featured. It also maximizes the number of songs one can play on a trying-way-too-hard playlist, a.k.a. my oh-cute-oh-it's-over brief, song-deficient playlist.

But, I did play "Welcome to the Jungle" by GNR because HEY. I had to.

The invitations:

Each had a picture of the invited child and details about the party, passport-style.

Apparently, there is some serious strep throat rampaging across the countryside since 3 children fell ill THAT SAME DAY. Kind of a bummer to not have some of her good buddies coming, but we'd still have 8 kids. And, more sangria for the rest of the adults, right?

The Girl welcomed her guests wearing her safari hat that she decorated earlier and led her friends to the hat making station where they decorated their own with foam animals.

The Boy also was pressured into donning a hat, but he was less enthused about the hateful thing that we kept trying to slap on his head.

*actual length of time hat on his head = 0.02 seconds.

Mystery animal tracks were on brown builder's paper along the entrance hallway, leading downstairs into the basement.

Hats made, the kids were off to follow the tracks downstairs into the brush...where a safari camp site featuring the Moonbounce, of course! Since there's always a Moonbounce at a safari camp site in the middle of the jungle!

Of course, everything else is just an accessory when there's a jungle safari moonbounce in the mix. We could have had real boa contrictors and zebras and the kids would have been like What.Ever.

We laid out a brown plastic tarp on the ground outside of the bounce and had those flickering electric candles to set the mood. The Jungle Book was playing on the TV but after realizing that this put The Girl in a trance that made her neglect the bounce that WOULD NOT BE HERE IN A COUPLE OF HOURS while the movie would be available for perpetuity, we mysteriously lost power to only the TV.

Upstairs, we more civilized adults enjoyed sangria, mini-tacos, banana chips and Cava.

(the kids had "bug juice" which also contained a good percentage of apples and green #4)

After a good amount of bouncing, it was time for the safari.

The kids put on their decorated safari hats and their binoculars and were unleashed into the backyard where animal figurines were "hiding".

This was my favorite part of the party. The kids were so excited to find the little figurines tucked in different places, on the fence, on stumps, on the patio furniture...after they found them all (and everyone, even the little ones found some), we put them all together and split them evenly.

The pizzas came right on time, how the delivery person made it into the jungle beats me, and we all got to eat outside on the deck in the gorgeous, gorgeous weather.

Then, probably The Girl's favorite part: CAKE.

A Snake Cake. (2 bundt cakes - one yellow, one chocolate and my first foray into dyeing frosting. It was intoxicating. And I'm not talking about the fumes.)

Yes, those are poor little peeps waiting to be consumed.

And for those with nut/egg allergies, another snake.

Unfortunately for the snake, we had to stick candles in its head and light them as part of a jungle safari ritual sacrifice. Afterwards, it was dismembered and eaten.

Even though a bunch of people couldn't come last minute - I was thinking previously how odd it was that EVERYONE said they were coming - it turned out to be a great number overall and a really good group of people. Add a few more kids into that moonbounce and someone may have lost an eye. I think she had an absolute blast.

Overall, I think it turned out as well as I could have hoped for. Every last drop of the ginormous punch bowl of sangria was drained which I hope was more about the adults enjoying themselves than trying to drown out hearing "Welcome to the Jungle" again. At the end of the night, The Husband told me that maybe I need to let the memory of this party die before attempting another one. He thinks a Chuck-E-Cheese party is in order for the 5th. And maybe the year after, I can go big again. I don't know. I'll have to think about it.

Me and the birthday girl.