On Turning 5

It's been over a week, and I haven't even written about Caitlin's birthday! Probably because it's taken me until now to recover from it all! I'm not sure why I agreed to letting Caitlin have a sleep-over, even if it was with only 3 other friends. Probably because her older brother got to have one for his birthday. I'm not sure why I agreed to Brandon's request to have his friend J spend the night during Caitlin's party. Probably because on of Brandon's friends came a long distance for his sleep-over in September, so I added in the friend's little sister (a friend of Caitlin's as well) to sweeten the deal. But I do know why I was exhausted..... too many kids!!! :-)

So, as you know, Caitlin requested a sleep-over for her birthday. It was more of a requirement, actually. She came up one day and announced the names of the friends she wanted to invite to her sleep-over. Excuse me? We're having a sleep-over? In the end we agreed, and managed to whittle her list down from just about everyone in her school to 3 close friends.

We did the party the Friday before her birthday. My preference would have been doing it the weekend after her birthday, but I was gone that weekend, so that wouldn't work. Doing it when we did meant jumping into birthday planning with both feet right after returning from our holiday trip. Nothing like sending out a birthday Evite a week an a half before the event! Crazy at it all was, it went pretty well. We are all aware of the bossy friend, and the quiet friend, and the rambunctious friend. I now know which of Caitlin's friends doesn't do well staying overnight, and which ones will eventually go to sleep if Brian plants himself on the couch at 10:00 pm. I even managed to plan a menu that worked well with nut and dairy allergies. Go me! I sometime think we're the only family around without any food allergy issues. I also know that having a friend over for the other sibling isn't necessary, just fair. But now we're all even, so I don't need to do this for a loooonnngggg time.

Caitlin's sleep-over was a success, and I brought snack to her school the day before her birthday. We were all set to bring snacks to AWANA on the night of her actual birthday, but the crazy, fast, windy, blowing snow got all evening events cancelled. We did managed to celebrate her birthday with Daddy after he arrived home almost 3 hours after leaving work. I'm sure his co-workers were thrilled with the 3 dozen frosted cupcakes he brought to work the next day. I was happy to see them leave.

I'm also happy that I don't have to do another birthday party for 9 months. Yay!