First, the birthday weekend

I'm just going to cut & paste my note to the April 2000 board here. Some of you already know much of this... sorry if it's dull!

Friday, G's class enjoyed mini muffins to celebrate his birthday with him (store-bought, because choir practice is Thurs night and I knew I'd have no time to also make muffins!). That night, I baked 2 dozen chocolate cupcakes. Saturday started out with some rain (ugh!), but I'd bought a pop-up canopy on Friday just on a hunch. As we arrived at the park, the rain had completely stopped, and G and I tried to set up the canopy. We got pretty far, but at some point, you just need 2 adults setting it up--and that's when my uncle and aunt arrived. Yay! We got it set up and pivoted it over to cover the table. I set out the tablecloth, cupcakes, frostings, and sprinkles, plus fresh fruit and muffins for the adults. The kids started arriving and spent the whole party checking in at the table and running off to play on the play equipment. It did rain steadily (but softly) for about 1/2 an hour at one point, but the canopy really sheltered... the parents. The kids were in raincoats and didn't care!

After the rain really let up, I broke out the kites. All the kids got choices and really tried to get them up. Not enough wind. G's kite completely broke at one point, so I went back to the car and got out his fish kite from Costco that I'd just bought on a whim. It's a clownfish (but not Nemo) and is really cute--and nice! It took a while to figure out all the wires that needed to be connected up,and I got it up a few times, but the wind just wasn't enough. (and my toes were getting swampy, and G had lost interest)

As the kids left, I handed out sidewalk chalk and bubbles and a little 99-cent stuffed beanbag toy from Walgreen's. They were a big hit! One kid stayed behind and did bubbles and sidewalk chalk with G while his mom helped me clean up and collapse the canopy. One of the kids declared it the best party she'd ever been to. I was glad I'd packed a bag full of scarves, hats, and raincoats!

We went home and relaxed, and went to bed early. Sunday morning, my alarm went off at 5AM and I got up, got ready, and was picked up for Sunrise Service at a local church. I had grabbed G's pants, shirt, and sweater... but no shoes! I just carried him to the car in his PJs, strapped him in, and tucked a blanket around him. We've done this a lot for car trips. It wasn't till I was dressing him at the church (in the car) that I realized his shoes were not with us. Oops! So I carried him into the church. Service was beautiful, sunrise was hiding (fog, again!).

Then we went home, I changed to a dress I liked better, and went to church to prepare for our church's Easter service. It went well--we sang two songs with the choir and played 1 song on the handbells that went very well. Afterward, we had a cake from Costco and sang Happy Birthday to G. Then, we packed up quickly and went off to a "swap"--a group of gals and I get together maybe once a year with our perfectly usable things that we just don't care for any more, and go home with new (to us) stuff. I unloaded my gold lacey dress and went home with some clothes no one else wanted but now realize *I need to donate, as I don't love them*!

We came home and I baked probably 7 dozen mini cupcakes for Y-kids today. I made a batch of frosting this morning and iced 3/4 of them, and then took out the store-bought frosting to ice the rest. Woke G up, and he was THRILLED with the "sleep set" I had bought & had monogrammed from Disney (blanket, pillow, eye shades, and bag with Mickey on them). Then he got his precious Lucky Charms cereal for breakfast and I took him to Y-kids, to celebrate his "real" birthday with the kids there.

Phew! And we still leave for Disneyland Thursday!