ailbhe | The Birthday: Linnea is Three

Linnea's party went well. We bought lots of food, paper plates and bowls, etc. We did most of the food purchasing on Friday and most of the prep on Saturday. Then on Sunday we sliced the wet vegetables and bought the bread. There was some sort of major train disruption so no-one from London or environs could come but we had a lot of folks anyway. There were Radz and Niall and Oyster (3), Nicky and Luke and Iz and Jo (4), Helen and Brian and Dylan and Rose (4), five of the Porticos (5), Mary from Homestart (1), Farmor and Grandad (2) (my mother has never yet been around for Linnea's birthday, but hopefully that will change one of these years...), Ruth and Ben from our street (2), James-who-is-not-red (1), Linda and Emily from our street (2), and I think that's it. That's 24 people not including the four of us. I've probably forgotten someone.

The cake was fantastic. Sam delivered it (she lives around the corner and sells cakes at the Farmer's Market and the Workhouse Coffee Shop) on Sunday morning and I couldn't believe how gorgeous it was. It cost almost exactly what I'd budgeted for it a couple of months ago, too. It was two round tiers, decorated with carrots and a bunny who had carelessly left footprints all over the icing. Because not everyone came we only needed the bottom tier and all the kids got a carrot.

There were no organised games at the party. We had a paddling pool full of balls, about 30 tubs of playdough, paper, crayons, a rocking horse, a sit-on train, a Vtech walker, and so on. And a couple of tables with picnic food on them. Oddly, almost no-one ate fruit, so I foisted a lot of it onto James when he was leaving. A number of people were able to take baguettes away with them too. But I managed to find a working kettle and teacups, so we had tea at least.

It was very very low-key. I shall seriously consider using that hall again and doing almost exactly the same thing for other parties; it was easy and pleasant, and now that I've been there once I know what I need to do differently in future. I doubt there'll ever be another cake like that one though; this was the very first celebration of Linnea's birth, but it's a bit extravagant for every year.

I do love my girl.