Annalie started planning her 5th birthday party approximately two weeks after her 4th birthday. She was just full of good ideas. For a while she wanted a Chuck E. Cheese party, then she wanted a Space Chimps party, then she wanted a Beverly Hills Chihuahua party. For a long time she wanted a Sea World party, but when we explained to her that it was too expensive to take more than one friend, she decided she could go to Sea World some other time.

Then a couple of months ago when we were driving somewhere, Annalie announced that she knew exactly what she wanted for her birthday cake, and described it to me in great detail. She wanted a lemon cake, shaped like a flower, with pink strawberry frosting for the petals and blueberry frosting in the middle. “And the lemon cake has to be really lemony, Mom. We could use lemons from our own tree!” She was very specific and very definite in what she wanted.

I’m not a big party planner, but I definitely bake a mean cake. I told Annalie I could do exactly what she wanted for the cake. Then I told Brenda the party-theme queen about it, and she said, “That’s such a strong symbol, and she’s so definite about it…we should make it a Flower Party!” I thought about it for a second, about how I usually like to keep my parties as simple as possible and how Brenda likes to make her parties as complicated and detailed as possible…and then I mentally shrugged and told Brenda as long as Annalie thought it was a good idea, and as long as she helped me, she could go crazy with the flower theme.

Brenda immediately came up with a bunch of great ideas: Use a cookie cutter to make flower-shaped pb&j’s! Cut grooves down the length of carrots and cucumbers and slice them so they look like flowers! Float flowers in the fountain! Make flower t-shirts with freezer-paper stencils!

Brenda was so excited about the theme that I got into it too. Annalie wanted a piñata so I found a flower-shaped one online. Then I came across some cool flower-shaped gel clings and snapped those up so we could use them decorate the windows in the dining room. I made rainbow Jell-O jigglers and cut them into flower shapes with a cookie cutter.

And I made the cake, of course. I baked a lemon cake (with lemons from our own tree) in two round 9-inch pans, torted and filled the layers with strawberry cream cheese frosting, wrapped them in plastic wrap and stuck them in the freezer for a while. I traced one of the pans onto wax paper, then drew a six-petal flower inside the circle I had traced. I cut the flower out, set it on top of the chilled layers and used a sharp knife to carve the layers into a flower shape.

Next I filled and stacked the layers, then spread a thin crumb coat of strawberry cream cheese frosting over the whole cake before popping it back into the freezer for a few minutes. Once the crumb coat was firm, back out it came for the final layer of pink frosting.

A thin outline for the pink petals and a generous swirl of blueberry cream cheese frosting center later, the cake was done to Annalie’s exacting specifications. Then I added stars around the base with the blueberry frosting because I had so much left and it seemed a shame to waste it.

Once all the guests were there, everyone loaded up their plates and ate outside on the patio, under the festive party flags that Sue made for us. We were barely done eating when Annalie asked, “Can we do the piñata next and then open presents and then do the treasure hunt and then have cake?”

The piñata-whacking was quite fun! Each of the kids got at least two or three turns with the hitting stick, though the littlest kids didn’t hit the piñata so much as wave the stick in the general direction of it, which was hilarious.

In the end Annalie was the one who busted it open, with some help from Troy. That made her very happy.

It worked out nicely to have Annalie open her presents right after that because all the kids had candy to occupy themselves while they watched her unwrap. Everyone was too busy undoing wrappers and licking lollipops to try to “help” Annalie unwrap anything!

Annalie got some great presents this year, including a bike with training wheels from me and Troy, and her very own fluffy white kitten from Brenda and Bug. Bug has a kitten just like that, and every time we go to their house Annalie carries it around the whole visit and is very sad to say good-bye when we go home. Brenda poked around on Amazon till she found another one, and Annalie definitely loved it.

After the presents were all opened, Sue gathered all the kids in the dining room to teach them how to make tissue-paper flowers while Brenda and I ran around setting up the treasure hunt. It was a little bit over most of the kids’ heads, but with the adults’ help most of them mananged all right.

After they kids tore through the treasure hunt, found the treasure, wrapped their t-shirts and posed for a group shot, it was cake time!

As in years past, we had a lot of trouble getting the candles to stay lit. When are we going to learn to just do the candles-and-singing part inside, out of the wind? Probably never. We did eventually get all five candles lit. Annalie allowed us to sing to her this year, with the caveat that we were NOT to clap at the end of the song. She blew out her candles…

…and then sneaked a fingerful of frosting from the back of the cake. We made sure she got that piece.

After the cake, we pulled out the wading pools and set up the beach ball sprinkler. We helped the kids into their swimsuits, layered on the SPF, and set them loose. The adults sat a semi-safe distance away from the water, keeping an eye on things and chatting.

Brenda managed to take a picture of me with my hair in a ponytail that I don’t hate. (Good work, Hugh!)

It was a fun afternoon, with kids playing, parents and grandmas talking and laughing. We were blessed with gorgeous weather just right for splashing around without being too terribly hot.

After awhile we were all hot and tired, so we went inside and got the kids dressed. We popped a mess of popcorn, pushed the couch and cedar chest back, spread a big blanket on the floor of the living room, and watched a movie. When it was time for dinner we ordered pizza and that was delicious and required very little work on my part, which was really all I wanted in a meal at that point of the day.

Overall, the day went very smoothly. It’s kind of amazing how well this motley group of girls got on with each other, considering that their ages were 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 10. I guess when you have a good mix of personalities the ages don’t matter so much. And I guess this mix of personalities was just the right recipe for a great birthday party.

Believe it or not, there are even MORE photos in the photoset Annalie’s 5th birthday on my Flickr. There are more photos (some the same, some different) in the photoset Flower Birthday Party for Annalie in Brenda’s Flickr. Brenda also wrote about the party here. And with that, I do believe I am done posting about Annalie’s 5th birthday. Whew.