A Party Fit for a Super Hero

There are three times in a year that I get to use my creative juices for good.  Well, I have an excuse to go all out and spend ridiculous amounts of time crafting...Christmas (I make my own cards), Halloween (I make Q's costume), and Q's Birthday.  Q was born on August 13, 2004 at 21:51 hrs.  So, ya...I'm like a week late.  But the curse of a summer baby...everyone is away during his birthday, every year.  This year, he wanted a Super Hero Theme.  I was pretty excited.  This would be fun!  Making the invitations would be super fun (pardon the pun).  I was super stoked...

Until Q said, "Oh, but Mommy I wanted to buy the invitations this year..."  I'm not gonna lie, my heart sank a little.  I was able to get around that by sending e-mails instead of buying them.  Ha ha.  I should have taken the out, though, because by the time I bought all the raw *materials* it would have been waaaay cheaper to buy everything.  But not nearly as fun.  Of course.

So, for the goodie bags, I bought good ol' paper bags from the dollar store.  Thirty for a dollar.  Gotta love a deal.  Then I found logos for the different Super Hero's Q likes from the Internet to make templates.  They took forever.  Especially the Hulk.  That one was just tedious.  Superman was the hardest though.

I used the same template for the table cloth.  Bought a blue one from the dollar store (again...Yay!!) and stuck the logos all over it.  Along with a KA-POW!!, BANG!, WHAM! and SWOOSH (this idea came to me at 2:00am last night while I was trying to fall asleep (must have been the coffee I had before I went to bed...Nah!)  My brother pointed out that *Swoosh* has been copyrighted by Nike, so please don't tell them I used their trademark.  Thanks.

The balloon idea would have worked a little better if I had used helium, but I have something against buying *air*, even if it does make you talk funny when you suck it in.  So, I (read: my brother) blew up a whole bunch of Super Hero coloured balloons and then I took a whole bunch of green ones with a black one, tied them all together and slapped a Hulk logo on it.  Did the same for Spiderman, Superman, and Batman.  My fabulous brother also pointed out that I mixed Marvel Super Heroes and DC Super Heroes for any of you comic buffs out there who've noticed the same.  I don't know the difference.  They all go around saving the world in tights, so it's all the same to me.  Now if you were talking Gucci vs. Prada I'd totally get it.

The one thing that I didn't make was the cake.  I really am okay with admitting my weaknesses and baking is one of them.  I didn't think that 8 mothers really wanted me sending their kids home with e-coli or salmonella or anything of the sort.  I also didn't want to hear any, "This cake tastes awful" so Q and I went to order a Spiderman cake.  Can you see it?  The picture is a little small.  It was pretty cool, though.

The only thing I didn't plan for was rain.  Even though I had been religiously checking the forecast every 5 minutes for the past week and every 5 minutes it said it was going to RAIN.  But Plan B's are for smucks, I think...well...that and McDonalds needed 10 days notice (and nine bucks per kid...isn't a happy meal like $3.95?).  My Plan B consisted of having all 10 six year old's in my house playing games like "Pin the Mask on the Super Hero" and "Who am I - Super Hero Edition". 

I know.  Like Super lame, right?

I woke up to rain.  There was something about me that really wanted to check the forecast even though it was clearly raining, and it said that it wasn't going to rain.  The forecast is never, ever wrong, right?  So, I threw Plan B out the window and off to the water park we went. 

Where it rained.

Well, rain is an exaggeration.  It kind of sprinkled.  We found a party wrapping up, so we hovered until they got really uncomfortable and we had our stuff moved in before they had left.  Hey, it's a dog eat dog world in the birthday world.  Let me tell you. 

The rain clouds dispersed.  The sun came out.  The party was a success.  The great thing about having an outdoor party at a park is you don't have to plan any games to keep the kids entertained.  They played soccer, they went to the park, before I knew it, the party was over. 

And my baby is officially six.  Where does the time go?