Tiki Time!

I have the best, most wonderful readers! All of whom are very attractive, too. Thanks for you encouraging words...I really needed to hear them, even if I was totally fishing for the compliments.


Saturday was the Boy's 4th birthday party. A couple years ago - which seem like only a couple weeks ago - we had a big BBQ to celebrate. Well, it was so much fun that we decided to do it again. I forced convinced the Boy to go for a luau theme (since I already had a bunch of decorations from the Man's 'Survivor' party - which we had before I started this blog so sorry, no pictures - and I am nothing if not cheap). We had to limit the number of people invited because we weren't sure what the weather would do (we got over six inches of snow a few days before!) and can't fit that many people in the living room of our house and be happy about it. Then I had to decide what to make for the cake that was a) unique (I've made too many volcanoes) and b) would make the Boy happy. I decided to shift the theme to tikis and made the cake to reflect that. Wanna see the cake?

As people began arriving, I had plenty of help getting the food ready and the chairs set up in the backyard. I should have done a LOT more prep work but we had just returned from a camping trip the evening before. It was all I could do to have the cake baked and cooled before collapsing onto my much-missed bed.

Da Boo's job was to give leis to our guests as they arrived. One little boy took it upon himself to show his sister how much he likes her.


He was very proud that he emptied the lei box. It was too funny!

It turned out to be a lovely day and we stayed outside for the most part, enjoying hot dogs and hamburgers, chips, fruit and the Boy's favorite drink: Black Cherry Kool-Aid (soooooo glad that was outside!). There was only one game. The Boy - during our argument discussion on the party theme - had insisted on having bowling. So I suggested coconut bowling - with a real coconut.


The kids loved it and I got hit with the coconut only once. I taped the tiki printouts to empty soda cans. If I do this again, I might try to make them a little heavier. After bowling, it was time for cake!


I'm going to do a product review on the new kind of cake mix I used but it was very tasty. There were only a couple cupcakes and one slice of cake left. I served it with vanilla and chocolate crinkle ice cream.

Since the house was getting a little crowded with all the sugar-stuffed kids, we moved outside to open the presents.


Shortly thereafter, our guests began to leave. The treat bags were kinda lame because I spent most of my budget on the food. But hey! There was candy inside so the kids were pretty excited.

We got everything cleaned up and let the Boy bust through the packaging on a few of his presents and start playing with them. He got a lot of cars and a big walking monkey/King Kong type toy. It didn't take him long to start sending King Kong crashing through his new car lot...


Oh, the imagination of a little boy!