Every Body Dance Now

Some pictures from Sym’s birthday dance party on Friday!

I bought disco lights and hung gold glitter fringe all over the living room. I closed most of the blinds and turned off lights to make it more of a dance party atmosphere since it was the middle of the afternoon.

I put a white plastic table-cloth over the kitchen island, liberally sprinkled it with silver glitter and stars and then covered it with a clear vinyl table-cloth.

I wanted the kids to have lots of water since they were dancing up a storm. I originally planned on putting lemon slices in the water but I wanted Taylor to be able to drink it so I made cucumber water instead, which weirded everyone out. Clearly they’ve never been to a spa! I also bought fruit sodas made with real juice since I figured they’d be marginally healthier than regular pop, and the kids put Pixi Stix in them. OOPS.

I know this looks like the candles say “01” but that’s because Taylor took a picture of the back of the cake!

Sym opened the presents from her friends first, and then the one from Taylor and me: Dance Central 2! It was perfect: the present WAS the party, and everyone got into it. We have two rules for Dance Central at our house: everybody plays, and no one makes fun of you if you suck.

Even Sym’s dad got into it! At first he was like “nope, no way, I’m not playing,” and when his wife arrived she said the same thing. Six songs later they were both drenched in sweat and she was trying to calculate how much it would cost for an Xbox, Kinect and the game.

This cake looked like an ordinary, poorly decorated cake from the outside (I’m really bad at icing cakes so I just like, PAVED it in silver jimmies), but inside it had a secret.

Chocolate donuts baked into the layers! I was worried this wouldn’t turn out- I had planned on baking a practice cake during the week but with Halloween on Monday and the party on Friday time just got away from me. Luckily it turned out DELICIOUS and was well received by all the guests.

Once all the kids were picked up Sym opened the rest of her presents (from family and pets, haha). She got tons of great stuff, books and Playmobils, Hello Kittys and Monster High Dolls, all her favorite stuff. Her paternal grandparents got her an authentic kimono from Japan and I got to spend Saturday afternoon trying to figure out how to tie it properly. Thank god for instructional youtube videos! It’s a bit big on her but I think my efforts turned out all right.

Saturday was her actual birthday, and she requested pancakes for breakfast and for me to play Playmobils with her.

I was able to comply on the first part, but I had some serious back pain and a killer migraine, so I ended up having to go to bed in the afternoon. It sucked and I was disappointed that I couldn’t spend more time with her on her birthday, but at least I threw her a killer party!