Miss4's birthday party!

Despite pouring rain all night and the forced cancellation of outside play, Miss4's Jungle Party was a rollicking success!

I broke all my healthy eating rules with the kids munching on cheese Twisties, red-food-dyed cheerios, white, margarine-ed 'fairy bread', and a store-bought (but home decorated) cake. As a concession to healthy food choices there was a bowl of blueberries and a bowl of strawberries. Some strawberries did get eaten, but I suspect that not a single blueberry was tasted by any of the party-going kids (Miss1 thought they were great, though).

The cake was a masterpiece, if I do say so myself :-) It is my first attempt at decorating a cake and it was a lot of fun. I drew the same lion on the cake as I used on the invitations and the favour bags. A little OTT perhaps, but what the heck.

The kids had a blast decorating their head-bands into various jungle creatures. Some exotic species were chosen, including a couple of kangaroos and a blue-and-black tiger, and the kids could choose to get their faces painted too. The face-painting stretched the ingenuity of my cousin and I. How do you face-paint a kangaroo? Fortunately the kids didn't know either :-)

There was pin-the-tail-on-the-Zebra, and Merl organised a Safari (treasure) Hunt where the kids hunted for little tattoos (I found some cute cartoon jungle ones at the $2 shop). And we played "Sleepy Lions" (which is roaring around the place while the music plays, then dropping to the floor 'asleep' when the music stops), we read jungle stories, and we had a Jungle Parade where we marched around and around the house singing "In Africa there is a Jungle, EIEIO, and in that Jungle there is a ... kangaroo... " etc, and the kids joyfully joined in with appropriate noises and actions.

No epic meltdowns, and only a few minor ones - one from Miss4 who suddenly decided she "needed space" (which she does every so often when overwhelmed by stuff - or possibly to have a sulk, I'm not sure which actually - this behaviour may need some looking into. Sulking to get your way is not desirable). And a couple from the wee lass down the road who is ... um... not used to sharing or cooperating, as she doesn't get any practice at this at home. But the situation was resolved without pandering to her, so that is all good (we redirected play into Story Time at that point).

Merl had the brilliant thought of appointing a friend who was here with his son to be 'photographer', so we actually have quite a good photographic record of this birthday. Hooray!