Brodie's birthday weekend

I'm happy to report that much fun was had as we celebrated Brodie's birthday all weekend long and into Monday, too. Yes, we had to do have her all-class celebration on Monday because another little girl was having hers on Friday and we didn't want to detract from either girl's limelight. In all it was a lot of work, but I have to admit I had a great time planning, shopping for and directing it. I think the key was not asking what Brodie wanted and just making choices that I knew she would generally approve of. Giving children too many choices can lead to tantrums and meltdowns and your kid might get upset, too. Preparations included selecting decorations - we kind of went with a multi-color, Mexican fiesta theme and hung paper floral streamers and paper globes throughout the room. Then I had to plan and buy the adult food (wine/beer, manchego, bacon-wrapped dates, olives, cut fruit), select the kid meriendas (snacks) and select the goodie bags for her party on Saturday and the all-class party on Monday. These bags and their innards are called chucherias and are stuffed with bad candy and plastic little toys that pose a choking hazard to small children and will later live in the landfill. For the Saturday party we filled little paper cones with Jelly Bellys (these are exotic candies over here!) and for school we opted to do traditional candy and marshmallows in Disney princess bags. For both days I baked cupcakes and used my mother-in-law's recipe for butter cream frosting. They turned out great and seemed to be a hit with all the children and parents. Cupcakes as we know them are not generally made here and if you do find some form of them, they're usually too dry and the icing leaves something to be desired. Most importantly all but one boy's parents stayed and we all got to know each other. Everyone was so very nice and seemed happy for the opportunity to meet other parents. One mom said, "I love American birthday parties - especially the fruit!" That made me laugh, but she said that generally kids parties are nothing but sugar explosions. Sadly, Brodie was the only child who ate it! She's a little fruit fly that one. On Sunday we took Brodie and Sabine down to Fuencarral Street which they close to traffic every Sunday morning. Brodie's big birthday gift was a pink Orbea bike with training wheels! She was tentative at first, but pretty soon was cruising along on her own until she fell over. Ack. We all saw it happening (in slow motion, of course) and it was painful, mainly because I know how scared she was, but she cried into her daddy for just a bit, dusted herself off and said, "I want to get back on." I thought Kyle was going to explode with pride. It was a perfect weekend. The posted snap is from the Saturday party - Brodie is sandwiched between Jaime on the left and Jorge on the right.