Fishy Birthday to you!

Fishy turned 11! His birthday is always wedged in between Christmas, school starting and this year the big Golden anniversary last week-end. He is easy to please though which is lucky because it was the fastest I have ever thrown a party together. I had subliminally led him to believe party bags and balloons were babyish so he insisted on not having them. Instead they were lucky to get a tablecloth and a Killer Python jelly lolly at the end. The cake was minus a candle which has still not been found so I borrowed one from the party over the way. There was too much wind so we fake blew it out any way.It was the ubiquitous rainbow cake but not the ones you read about in the mythology of blogworld. Anna had scared me with stories of cooking icing so I cheated. This one is three $2 Green's vanilla cake mixes making six thin cakes. I split each mix, added red, blue and yellow colouring and then mixed the colouring for the green, orange and purple ones. The kids loved swirling the colouring into the batter. There were enough e numbers there to send a dog into space. We used the packet icing to stick the skinny cakes together. I didn't slice them. Too hard. I just cooked them skinny by baking the half batches in a normal cake tin for less time. The whole thing was schmeared with whipped cream, Fishy's favourite, and much easier to apply to a dodgy multilayered cake which has just been speed cooled under the fan.
They ate the whole thing in minutes and there was a lot of it. One boy asked for the recipe! Ha! Even he should be able to manage this one.
I had to hold the Big Fella up for a while as he had exerted his turbo charge to excess entertaining the rabble.
Whilst the girls hung around, the boys got stuck into some serious cricket.
Laundry basket cricket is our preferred version.
Huzzah! That is his soccer face, also his cricket face it seems.
Shorty and Lala found some friends poolside and socialised the afternoon away.
Meanwhile, the Big Fella thought he'd get a bit nautical with the rope. It wasn't there to tie up the guests as I had thought.
He thought he'd get a bit creative with the tug-o-war games
which left his turbo in need of a recharge.
Coco Van, our rubber chicken, attends all our parties now. I had to fish her out of the straw down in the coop/ cubby where she resides between party gigs as a bush turkey cautionary tale. Note the posture, hold and deep concentration of the flinger. The game was invented at Newmarket Pool at the twins' 11th birthday party and has come to be known as Hot Flung Chicken. I am informed that it became the event du jour on the Year 7 party circuit last year. You can read more of its dubious history here.
We fed them watermelon, chips, sausages and cake. Some locals joined us in finishing off the food.
Happy Birthday, Fishy boy! Thanks for being so easy to please and for inviting us to your way cool party! x