Party like you're turning 9 in '09

School started on September 8th this year, which is quite late. I had been gearing myself up for my big day of liberation. My final days of August were full of multiple back to school nights, a few meet the teacher events for the kids, and of course the Labor Day holiday weekend.

On the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Maddie walks into my room and says, "I can't believe my birthday is a week from today!"

Uh...me either, because I had spaced on how soon her birthday was. It is usually in the second week of school, not drowned out by multitudes of back to school preparations.

I also didn't realize how tricky it is to plan a birthday for a nine year old. She is too old for most of the party and game ideas I was throwing out.

We finally went with a cake decorating party. She invited four of her good friends over and Ben took them first to have lunch at Chipotle, which is one of Maddie's favorite restaurants, and then they returned to unleash their creativity on their individual cakes.

It was a surprisingly simple and fun birthday and the kids took home their cakes as their thank you gifts for coming.

Of course, it did take an entire day of baking cake, after cake, after cake. How I wish I had a double oven!!! Also, the lady in the check out aisle gave me and Andrew some strange looks as we poured $50 worth of candy onto the conveyor belt.











Andrew, Zack, and Mylie were banished to the kitchen, where they decorated cupcakes.




I loved Andrew's cupcakes. They involved much planning and forethought:



Zack went with a marshmallow theme:




Mylie was a purist and ate the candy toppings separately rather than decorate the cupcake with them:




We had a fun party!