Charlotte’s Fourth Birthday Party

Charlotte wondered into our bedroom around 2am this morning holding a helium balloon in her hand. I was feeling thick with cold and struggling to sleep and couldn’t quite believe my eyes. I told her it wasn’t morning and to be a good girl and go back to bed. An hour later Simba wakes us up, which is strange as we normally lock him in the lounge at night. Dan goes downstairs to attend to Simba and finds the T.V. blaring! Charlotte obviously couldn’t wait to start partying! In the morning she told me, ‘It really would be nice of you to leave the food cupboard open so I could get myself some food in the night.’!

Well, morning came and Charlotte was a little tired. I knew she’d need a nap before the party or else she wasn’t going to be much fun!

Thankfully she did take a nap, but little Sophie’s nap was cut short with coughing and so she managed only half an hour. I really didn’t think Sophie was going to cope with the party, but she was an absolute trooper.

Both the girls had a wonderful time.

The weather was total ‘plop’, but we’d cleared the lounge and there was plenty of room for everyone. A week of preparation for a two hour party (two hour’s was definitely sufficient on a rainy day!). Dan and I didn’t feel up to throwing a party this morning, but by 3pm we were ready to roll with the punches and it went brilliantly.

We enjoyed some party games before sitting down for a little Birthday tea, followed by cake and sparklers outside under the deck. Even the adults got in on the act and sang a few bars of ‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands…’.

Charlotte loved her Thomas the Tank Engine Cake, complete with zoo animal candles. Along the party tea table she’d laid out track and trains, with zoo lego animals.

We played a round of pass the parcel (zoo animals beneath each wrapper) and sang some songs before playing a version of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’, except this was, ‘Put the kiss on the frog’! The children loved it (but more for the fact I was giving away chocolate fish to every participant!). We also played catch a chocolate fish, with several fish hung out on string and players had to use only their mouths to catch a fish.

The cardboard box zoo enclosures we’d made were popular too 🙂

There was a ton of cleaning up to do afterwards, but it was all worth it and dear Steph and Francis stayed till 6pm to help turn the house into normality. The children adored playing with them and Sophie definitely remembers Steph (who used to help me enormously when Sophie was a newborn).

Now we can start thinking about getting ourselves organised for our trip to the UK on 9 July!