Shipwrecked...

This year for birthday parties I took the easy route.  Madison's birthday is April 27.  Jaxon's is June 3.  I figured if I threw a party sometime in the middle of May I could cover both kids at the same time!  To make things even easier I threw said birthday party at a park.  No house cleaning before.  No mess to clean up afterwards.  Lots of space to run and have fun, which means I didn't have to plan a bunch of games and activities either.  Definitely the easy route.

Saturday was the big day.  I had the party planned for a splash park so that the kids could get wet if they wanted to.  Unfortunately the weather, which had been in the high 80's all week, turned a bit chilly Saturday and the kids only got wet for a bit.  They did have fun playing on the playground nearby, though.

The theme of the party was supposed to be pirates and mermaids in order to appease both the male and female guests.  I had dreams of this awesome pirate cake: http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/pirate-ship-cake-686286 as the centerpiece with mermaids swimming around it in the water.  I even frosted cupcakes with blue frosting and awesome gummy octopuses perched on top.  I had everything made Friday night and I went to bed confident that all would run smoothly Saturday.  Then I woke up to this:

And this:

It appears our pirate ship was overtaken by the Craken from Pirates of the Caribbean during the night.  It was in no way presentable.  But you can all pretend that it held together perfectly and that the little pirate is still walking down the Kit-Kat plank ready to be saved by the mermaids.  (It was a tragic morning.)  

Anyway, I had to go to the store and purchase additional cupcakes (something I've never done before) so that none of the 20 or so little kiddies at the party would be without a cupcake to suck the frosting off and then throw away.  And the fluorescent store bought frosting makes a much bigger mess, so that just adds to the fun.

Aside from the weather not cooperating and the cake disaster the party went smoothly. We had a fun treasure hunt to find the goody treasure boxes, the kids enjoyed the rainbow goldfish snacks, and though it wasn't hot enough to get wet, the weather was beautiful.  I know my kids had fun, they got lots of presents which they've been fighting over for the last 2 days, and now I can check birthday party off my list for another year!

And here are two of the cutest pirates I've ever seen:

Jaxon and his cousin Ethan.  

And our family.  The kids are showing of the treasure they found during the treasure hunt: pirate gold, jewelry, eye patches, and Nemo fruit snacks.  (so sad the cake was attacked, it ruined my whole theme :)

!