attempting a kid party.

The nonparty planner that I am, decided to plan a party in honor of Calvin's 5th birthday.

The goal: I wanted Calvin to feel special and have a blast, so it was all about him. What he wanted, not what I wanted.

Of course he wanted baseball.

So the main event of the party was going to be...you guessed it!

A game of baseball!

We invited his baseball lovin' buddies...you know, the ones who would not mind playing a game of ball in 100+ weather.

Calvin and I went to Party City to gather supplies. He gravitated to all things SF Giants...no surprise.

However, since some of the other players were Dodger's fans, I quickly decided on a party theme:

Did not want any disgruntled customers over here. Just had to include some Dodger blue.

Our days before the party were filled with party planning bliss:

• trips for food
• lists
• and nonstop talk of the party.

"Calvin, you are gonna have a party! Are you excited? I'm excited!"

Yes, we were excited. The thrill of the anticipation of the excitement. Eeeeep!!!!

The day before the party, I did as much as possible. Baking cupcakes, and cake...making sure the bathroom was clean...washing my hair....but fell asleep in exhaustion, without curling my hair. Or making cookie dough. Or making the banner seen above.

The day of.

We were off to a bad start. It seemed that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

I didn't understand--I had made a list! An actual bonafide list! Doesn't the making of a list automatically mandate that everything will go smoothly??? Well, it should.

Perhaps there were too many things on my list.

Ollie and Twain had absolutely NO respect for my list. None. Whatsoever. They blatantly laughed{and cried} in the face of my list. Things were not getting checked off the list very quickly.

And that's when things started to fall apart.

Literally.

While frosting the cake, it slowly started to split down the middle. And then more.

No worries.

I just kept adding more vanilla frosting. And then there was more splitting. Finn and Calvin stared on, in a mixture of horror and fascination. The more I frosted, the more it split. We now had a fracture in the shape of a huge "X" in the middle of my baseball cake.

And no, the green astro turf{coconut + green food coloring} did nothing to detract the eye from the grand canyon.

We even tried grafting in some pieces of cupcake to fill the cracks, but to no avail.

I consoled myself with the fact that it probably still tasted good.

And had a flashback to my gymnastic days.

My {non pc} coach once said of my back-walk-over, "It's like a smashed cake. All the ingredients are there, but it doesn't look very good." Coaches back then paid no heed to building ones self-esteem, ha. As a kid, I was not offended.

Anyhow, my cake truly looked bad, but at least we still had decent cupcakes:

and yummy lil' Dodger Dogs.


As the day progressed, chaos increased. And I sort of lost track of my initial goal{Calvin having fun}.

I regret to inform you, I turned hulk-ish. Barking orders and stressing out my poor boys.

And my barking did not make things faster. Bottom line, we were not able to pull off the perfectly planned party.

Guests began to arrive.

Ollie and Twain were still in pj's. Balloons were a tangled mess. My hair looked ugly. Things were not set up. And it totally escaped my notice that the birthday boy had his shirt on backwards:

But I doubt anyone cared that we were a mess. Everyone just helped me get things together-- Sweet, sweet guests.

Lil butter-cup and her bro. Some of the biggest baseball fans we know.

All cute in their baseball clothes.

I love how baby Paul has his hand on mama for safe-keeping.

Tweetle knows ALL about how things work around here. He picked up someones hat{put it on sideways}, grabbed a ball, and was ready to walk right into the middle of the game.

He ended up parking it in the middle of the field. Ah, the life of the 4th child. Always right in the thick of things.

Ollie was busy spraying his face.

Mr. Deryk was a ball player in the minor leagues.


And daddy showed NO mercy on his opponents.

Calvin had A BLAST. I've never seen my boy so genuinely pumped & excited playing ball.

Doing some happy dance. Backwards shirt and all.

He could not contain his excitement.

Mission Accomplished.

So, even though I failed at Party Planning 101, Calvin was happy, so that's all that matters.

It was too dark for cake pictures, so I will leave you with Calvin on his actual birthday.

Happy birthday sweetie. Thanks for thinking mama threw a great party. You are so easy-going and forgiving. God knew exactly what he was doing, placing you as second-born. You perfectly balance out your brothers on both sides. We all love you so much. Mommy, Daddy, Finny, Ollie and Baby.