Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Annie's Birthday Party
While Annie turned 3 a few days ago, we had her birthday party today. Immediately after breakfast we got started setting up various games and activities for the kids and the parents who were staying with them. Despite forecasts saying the weather was going to be good, gloomy clouds constantly seemed to threaten our plans. Thankfully the weather co-operated and the sun managed to break through the clouds at the start of the party and it stayed that way.

I have to hand it to Erika - she knows that one of the ways to have a successful children's party is to ensure that the parents also have a good time, and there was plenty of adult food and a couple of bottles of a light summery wine to ease things along. We got permission from some of our neighbours to use their sections of the laneway where we set up a craft table, bubble-blowing equipment, and a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game. I also set up the bouncing castle for the kids, which was a big hit.

The theme was a "teddy bear's picnic", so the kids were invited to bring along their favourite bear/dolly, and a large picnic blanket was spread in the middle of the back yard for the kids to eat their hotdogs and munchies off of. The "cake" was actually a pizza-size cookie that Erika had baked the evening before. Annie only ever eats the icing from cake, but she loves cookies, and the mess to clean up afterwards is considerably less than what you get with cake. Only problem was that the big "3" candle must have looked a little too much like icing, as she ended up taking a big bite out of it - which she soon regretted.

After a couple of hours the parents who didn't attend came back to pick up their respective kids, and the party slowly dissolved. The party ended up being a introductory get-together for a few of the neighbourhood parents who are newly moved into the area, finally getting the chance to mingle with others on the street.

When she wasn't in her swimsuit, Annie was dressed in a highly-colourful dress her Grandma Jean made for her. It has a "spinny" skit that balloons out when she spins, which she had a blast demonstrating to everybody, and managed to turn heads when we went down to our favourite kid-friendly eatery for dinner later in the day (apparently you can't get that sort of outfit in the stores).

Annie gleefully spent a good chunk of the evening playing with her new toys, one of the big hits being a Barbie sent to her from her Great-Aunt and Uncle from overseas. Up until now, Vanessa has had a near monopoly on these, so getting a new Barbie (instead of a hand-me-down Barbie, or even the pieces of what was once a full Barbie) was a real coup for Annie.

A very lucky, and happy, little girl.