Burnt bunting and baggage

 We have baggage. Heavy, hormonal baggage. Ironically, whilst I'm on drugs to suppress mine, I've particularly noticed the proliferation of grunty, teenage hormones that are charming and chatty one minute, then snarly and monosyllabic the next. At least our three he-teens generally like to rotate the foulness between them. When they get a little tired of being grouchy they pass the baton of beastliness to another brother from the same mother and have a little lie down in a scratchy bed of angst. It's harder for the she-teen for she must carry the banner of flouncy, high pitched she hormones nobly aloft on her roller coaster mood ride though. Tres dramatique!!!

The one below (see fig. 1) doesn't usually carry much "baggage" although, like most students of today, she does need to carry a ridiculous number of bags. For Year One there is the swimming bag, the library bag, the homework folder and the big bag for anything else you might need. Remember when you took a "port" with a pencil case, a sandwich and an apple allowing us to grow up with healthy backs and undamaged spines except for the fact that we have to carry their bags!

figure 1

Due to the excessive number of bags required to deliver a six year old party to the park, the Short One was told quite clearly that we would not be playing musical chairs and carting 15+ chairs or  cushions to her party. (I never did know exactly how many children came to that event.)

It was the one game she wanted and she would even forego the tedious parcel passing if the chair game was permitted. So we compromised and played musical paper plates. They stood in a line and passed the plates along so they had one each and stood on their plates in a row. Lala's friend played the Gruffalo's Child on the portable Barbie CD player and they all flitted about being fairies and elves and butterflies and mosquitoes. (see fig.2a) We just took a plate away each time till it was over. Much more fun than a line of hard furniture. Each child that was out got to run up for a lolly and a pat of the dog with the father of the birthday girl and there was no prize for last man standing- just another lolly and pat of the dog. You could even recycle the plates and serve deconstructed rainbow cake on them (see fig. 2b) but I didn't - people were watching.

figure 2a

figure 2b

As it turns out I could have though because they were distracted by the beautiful Japanese paper bunting on the cake which is apparently highly flammable. Who knew? (see fig. 3) I cheered and blew out the bunting before throwing it on the table and patting it out. They all looked up and paused and cheered too. She will always remember the birthday where there was hot flung bunting (not to be confused with hot flung chicken from the boys' parties) and they danced on the mock crockery. Hopefully it will be a good memory and not something she will consider "baggage".

figure 3

Luckily the big boys were there to take photos....

Go figure

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