Ainsley turns the big 0-5!

For the first time, Ainsley really expressed preferences for what she would like for her birthday party. What she really wanted was to be able to invite her whole class from school and to have a dinosaur cake. We decided that 5 really is a big birthday, so we booked a party at the Jump Zone, an indoor inflatables place. We held the party on a Tuesday night. Most of her class was able to come, so we had a pretty good crowd (about 20). Because it was after the normal “open play” time, we had the place to ourselves. This made the experience so much more enjoyable because the kids were the same age—no big kids to run them over!

I made the cakes for her party.

I made two sheet cakes (9 by 13) and cut them to fit together in one big cake. I frosted most of it green and used a “grass” tip to make tufts of grass. The river has blue sugar on it to make it sparkle. The volcano was Ainsley’s idea. My brother-in-law Nabil’s sister brought us some sweets from Italy on her recent trip to the States. (Which was very thoughtful, especially considering we didn’t even have a chance to meet her!) Among the sweets were two small cakes. We had already eaten one, and Ainsley suggested using the other one as the volcano. We thought that was an awesome idea! I bought the red icing because red is a really hard color to make (it looks pink) and I only needed a little bit. Ainsley placed the dinosaurs herself.

This is the other cake I threw together with the leftover icing. We didn’t end up needing it at the party, but I didn’t want us to be short on cake.

Here is Ainsley about to climb up one of the slides.

This is Ainsley’s friend Camille coming down a slide. 

   

The playing part of the party lasted from 6:30 until 7:45. Then they moved us into the party room, where Ainsley blew out the candles and everyone had cake and ice cream. Ainsley helped hand out the cake, and for her piece she wanted some of the volcano.

Because of how late it was (and on a school night!), and how chaotic opening presents normally is, we decided to have her open presents at home. We took pictures and tried to send each child a picture of Ainsley opening his/her present.

She really had a great time. I think it worked out really well.