Playing Catch-up: The Boy's Birthday Festivities

This posting falls into the "better late than never" category.

The boy had his birthday on Feb 11. It is now March 29 and I am letting the whole world know how the festivities went.

Of course, he had a birthday countdown calendar. The best stickers I found (that were not princesses) were Spiderman and bugs so I created a web between two buildings and had a red, blue and black theme. I'm pretty sure I took a picture when I hung it up, but can't find it. Here is the calendar with a week left until the big day.

Due to the combination of daylight savings time and bus pickup at 7:15, we have been having the opportunity to wake up to a beautiful sunrise every morning. Here is the view at 6:50am from our living room window.

And here is a silly birthday boy at about the same time.

Here is the view when the bus arrived early at 7:05am.

Of course, we needed to have a school celebration. We compiled orange gift bags with modeling clay, a tangram puzzle, silly glasses and, of course, the infamous slide-whistle. I contemplated many different themed cakes and finally decided that cupcakes were easier to transport and serve. Of course the frosting HAD to be orange and just to surprise my boy (and all his friends) I decided to put a Gogo on top of each cupcake. I had a great time buying 15 2-packs of Gogos at the neighborhood news stand, opening them all and deciding which ones were suitable for distribution among the boy's friends. I kept the best ones for him at home. I made all the cupcakes (German chocolate cake mix) but when I went to get the food coloring for the frosting, I couldn't find any. I had left it at church after an activity.

Oops!

I called (facebooked) my friend to see if I could borrow hers and then realized I didn't have time to get there, get back, get it all made and get to school before lunch. So, thanks to Debbie, I took all my supplies over to her house and made the frosting there, using her mixer, recipe, food coloring and counter. The color turned out awesome!

Unlike the girls' school, parents are invited and encouraged to visit their children's classes at the boy's school. I was invited to share desert with the kids after lunch. I got there while the kids were still at lunch and set up a cupcake and napkin at each desk. The kids came in with looks of amazement on their faces. Especially the ones who play with or collected gogos.

Now, being the great mom who plans ahead and always has everything perfect, I forgot to pack my camera into my bowl of frosting ingredients and my cell phone died during the walk to the classroom. I have no pictures of the orange-faced children eating their cupcakes (or just licking the frosting) or the look of complete joy that was on my boy's face when he was sung three different versions of the birthday song. Or the "what have I gotten myself into" look on the teacher's face when the kids opened their gift bags and found the slide-whistles.

I have to say that it was a success. The boy really liked it and all the kids said thank you. I even got to take home an extra cupcake so I could get a good picture.

When he got home from school, the boy opened the last pocket on his calendar. Each pack of gogos comes with two small sheets of stickers. In this final pocket he found ALL the stickers from the 15 packs we used for the cupcakes.

There is an album that goes along with these stickers that he had been talking about for a long time. Now, Daddy had meetings into the night so he couldn't come home for a party on his very birthday, but the boy agreed that if he got the album for his birthday on the very day, we could put off the cake and presents until Saturday. So the boy spent the afternoon sorting and sticking and matching his current gogos to his new stickers.

Here is the completed calendar with Pucca, Spiderman, Hot Wheels and bugs.

As a part of the Saturday birthday celebration, the boy got to choose anywhere to eat lunch. He picked Pizza Hut with no complaints from me.
Mmmmm!!

The boy dipping pepperoni bread sticks while his pizza cooled off.

The baby trying to accommodate THE WHOLE THING in her mouth.

The girl being eternally adorable.

For the cake at home, I ran into the same problem.

Still no food coloring.

I made a pan of brownies, frosted it and then used a familiar can of spray food coloring.

Anyone recognize it?

It is left over from the favoritecolornumberfourbirthdaycake. Who knew that food coloring spray kept for so long?

I wrote the boy's name in multi-colored crocantes (not quite mini malted milk balls, but the same idea without the great flavor) and had, by this time, located the missing birthday candles.