Waggs Walkabout: The Russian Turns Five

If you've ever wondered what happens when a bored over achiever with no sense of self-preservation plans a kid’s birthday, you should have been at our house for Dennis’ 5th birthday party.

Like so many of my endeavours it started with the simple concept. I needed to make a birthday cake. Of course, if you’re making a birthday cake you might as well invite a few people over to sing, share in the calories and celebrate the kid’s birthday. Last year’s party only had a couple of kids which were quite a bit younger then Dennis. Now that he’s in preschool and has friends, I decided to invite a few of them; so 2 little girls and 2 little boys were invited. Since we know most of their families, we invited the parents and any siblings to come along; plus our close personal friends that are part of Dennis' life.

I got busy dreaming up cake ideas and finally decided to go with pirates since he often spends an entire day in a pirate suit and knows that swords must be checked at the door of the dining room. He’s still a little miffed that the wild parrots in our yard won’t sit on his shoulder but that’s a whole other story.

Since I have way too much time on my hands, I decided to make a few decorations to dress up the yard and play along with the pirate theme. The first endeavour was the sea monster to put on the side of the shed. It’s a 7 x 7 garden shed but a 7 foot sea monster didn't seem very intimidating. SO, I decided to make it look like the monster was rising up out the water. That seems like a perfect solution until I was out in the yard one afternoon and it occurred to me that the shed backs to the fence and I could make a bigger monster if I took it around the corner and continued along the fence. The challenge was that my kitchen is only 8 foot square and the only non-carpeted room in the house. Hence the sea monster had to be drawn and painted and left to dry in sections and assembled on the fence the day of the party.

Once I really got rolling, it was all downhill. I dreamed up walking the plank across croc infested water, a wall of jelly fish and having kids hop scotching across a chain of islands. It didn't seem that over the top in theory, but on the day of the party, I questioned my own sanity.

There's also the fact that one of the little boys from preschool couldn't come to the party and I didn't want girls to out number the boys, so I invited two other boys who's families we met recently. What I didn't fully process was that they each have two siblings - SO, all in we had 12 kids coming.

The sea serpent took 2 days to make; cake baking in the world’s smallest oven was an all-day process, plus another day to decorate, none of which could happen while there was a serpent on the kitchen floor. Dennis got to help out by painting the waves to put in front of the serpent and the hopping islands and that kept him outside for hours.

Fortunately my dear friend Jennifer offered to help by drawing a shark and crocodile on the patio. She had so much fun that she just kept drawing sea life and even came back a second day to draw MORE including the driveway and footpath. She also kept the Russian entertained so that I could paint and cook in peace. There were also the 100 balloons for the jelly fish that couldn't be blown up and turned into jelly fish until the day of the party. Then were was the need to re-engineer the school of jelly fish because of the strong breeze that day. That little effort took an extra hour to whip up. Yes, I am certifiable. As Dave and I were laying in bed the morning of the party talking about everything that had to be done, I said to him "I am my own worst enemy". He kissed me and replied "No honey, YOU are MY worst enemy", then chuckled and got out of bed to attack the mountain of tasks to be done.

Chalk artist and friend Jennifer met guests as they came through the gate and handed out pirate hats, swords, eye patches and treasure maps to all the little pirates.