Lucy’s fifth birthday party

Lucy’s birthday doesn’t usually fall on Easter weekend, so we decided to take this rare opportunity for a super-festival of spring fun!

Lucy invited five of her closest friends (plus siblings and parents) to her birthday party on Saturday morning, April 23. We’d been working all that week to prepare opportunities for fun at her party, which made the rainy days pass quickly.

Our lineup activities at the party included:

* painting dyed eggs with watercolors (not very effective, but fun anyway)
* making sun-catchers with tissue paper and clear contact paper
* face painting (thank you to Jane for being the artist!)
* temporary tattoos (with lots of dolphins this time)
* an Easter egg hunt in the backyard
* and (needless to say) singing “Happy Birthday” and eating cake

For food, we had some of Lucy’s favorites:

* brie cheese (and cheddar, too, for the less adventurous) and crackers
* dried cherries (we are big fans of the Costco brand)
* iced sugar cookies (in the shape of the number 5; see photo)
* freshly cut pineapple
* pink juice
* chocolate cake with chocolate frosting
* jelly beans
* cherry-almond scones (for the grown-ups, mainly)
* coffee (again, required grown-up fare)

Lucy blew out all her candles with confidence (she’d been practicing with Papa after “last year’s difficulties”:/news/2010/four-is-a-lot-of-candles/). She had a blast parading around in her fanciest party dress, the look augmented by the new sparkly dolphin tattoo on her bicep.

We had our traditional slideshow running, showing photos from the past year, and an awesome kids’ music mix by Jon Boyd. Everyone had a great time, including the birthday girl. What more could we ask for?