BallFiend's Birthday Week Bake-a-thon

Last week was spent celebrating BallFiend's 5th birthday...

• On Friday, I sent BallFiend off to creche with a green-and-chocolate swirl cake to share.
• On Saturday, we held a party with his friends.
• On Sunday, we hosted an afternoon tea with the extended family.
• On Monday (his actual birthday), we chilled out at home.
• On Tuesday, I made gluten-free, egg-free, nut-free (flavour-free!) cup-cakes for him to take to Kinder to share.

Saturday's party was held at the local scout hall with 10 of BallFiend's kinder, creche and other friends, including MasterF, MasterW, LittleMissIz, Thing1 and Thing2 (daughters of FunkyOrganMan and ThingMaker). The party had a green-theme (a really simple theme to do - I can highly recommend it!). We had green balloons, a green table-cover, green napkins, plates, cutlery and of course all the food was green:

• pea and ham soup served in green cups;
• avocado dip with celery sticks for dipping (also some corn chips in green tubs);
• green jelly; 
• green-and-white coconut ice (which DeepSpice and I between us took four attempts to get right and then the kids didn't eat it anyway, but that was OK because all the groan-ups loved it!);
• a fruit platter of green(ish) fruits - Granny Smith apples, green pears and green grapes;
• the birthday cake was a butter cake with a green swirl through it and iced in green icing.

I also got 3 metres of neon-lime green tulle from Spotlight (on the discount table... I wonder why!) and made the kids green headbands to wear. We played a few games involving green straws but mostly the kids just played around in the hall. It was the easiest kids birthday party I've ever organised. Although I have to give fair credit to all the parents who hung around and helped out. I was assuming that being a five-year-old party, at least some of the parents would drop their children off for the 2 hours. But none did, and all were roped in to help with blowing up balloons, party games, food preparation and sorting out disputes! I was really glad that they did all end up staying.

Sunday's afternoon tea was attended by Gran, GrandPaul, StompyDad, CutLuce, DesignerMonkey, Cuz1, DesignerSis, Wigward and Great-Aunt-F (GrandPaul's sister) and her husband Great-Uncle-M. BallFiend and I made yet another birthday cake (banana with chocolate chips at BallFiend's request), and we ate party left-overs as well as Gran's chicken sandwiches and Great-Aunt-F's scones. Yummo!

By Monday (BallFiend's actual birthday), we were all too exhausted to do anything much at all. So after going to his usual swimming lesson, we came straight home so BallFiend could get down to the serious business of playing with all the toys he received as gifts. Highlights were:

• the mega-mega-soccerball (about 60cm diametre) from his aunt CutLuce and uncle DesignerMonkey.
• the gi-normous Earth beach ball (68cm diametre) from his aunt DesignerSis and uncle Wigward. (I'm sure DeepSpice would beg to differ with the promotional description that "It only takes a few huffs and puffs to fill this globe full of air" - he spent the first half hour of Sunday's afternoon tea blowing it up!)
• the foil "Happy Birthday balloon" on a stick from Cuz1.
• the green helium-filled balloons from Gran and GrandPaul.
• all the green balloons left over from the birthday party.

He also received several Lego kits and has been enjoying them a lot (as has Thumper), books, games, a marble run, construction toys, outdoor adventuring tools, dinosaur kits, a watering can and more. Some of the toys have been packed away so I can bring them out in instalments. There's easily enough to last him until Xmas time!

Overall he was totally indulged and doesn't really (know how to) appreciate it, but it doesn't matter... I loved seeing him so excited as he ripped open presents and how he got even more excited if they turned out to contain anything vaguely spherical. 
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