Backyard County Fair

This was the year. We decided to have Boo's first big birthday party.

She has a lot of little preschool friends that have summer birthdays, so all summer she attended really fun birthday parties: a Halloween birthday party, a Fancy Nancy birthday party, a tea party birthday party, a swim party, bounce house parties. As August crept closer I became increasingly panicked about what we would do.

Boo has always loved the state fair, and talks about it all year, so we decided to go with a Backyard County Fair birthday party. It was flat out fun to plan, I was excited about it as Boo.

I will admit, however, that I got more than one gray hair in the days leading up to the party. Among other things, a big storm was supposed to roll in right at party time. We had 24 kids attending, and I spent the better part of two days staring at my downstairs rooms, trying to figure out how to have the party indoors.

But by some miracle the weather was absolutely perfect. Everything went smoothly and everyone had a great time, thanks to some great friends who helped with booths, took pictures, and took care of crowd control.

We started with fair food: corndogs, watermelon, and carrots/dip in a little cup.
Then each kid got a bag with tickets...
and we let them loose in the backyard to do the booths and win prizes. We had:

Facepainting

Bean Bag Toss

Knock 'Em Down

Guessing Jar

Art Table

And a bounce house.

Kitty was enormously disturbed that the bounce house was loud...
..and we're still hearing about it, a month later, in a pitiful little voice, "Bounce house loud" (or, "Buh-hus wuh" in Kitty-speak).

After an hour or so of playing games, we rounded them up inside to open gifts...


...and have cupcakes.
The cupcake tower was fairly easy to make. I was very disappointed in the cupcakes: the batter pulled away from the cupcake liners, and the sprinkles melted on the frosting. Oh well, they tasted good and with five year olds, really it only mattered that cupcakes were present, taste and looks are optional.

After cupcakes, we had a Marshmallow Race.
The kids ran from one side of the yard to the other, balancing large marshmallows on plastic spoons, and then earned a medal.

The party was over at this point, but the kids stayed and played. Things finally wound down around nine, and we noticed the threatening clouds rolling in. We packed everything up in a hurry, and five minutes later we got hit with the rain and wind. But it was a success, and I'm ready to do it again.