Birthday Madness

My daughter had her birthday recently, and she'll be having her party on Saturday. She has chosen to invite 24 kids between the ages of 6 and 9 to a Disco party. There's no way so many kids would fit in our house, so we'll use the little barn that I use as my gallery.

Yesterday was a holiday: Christ's journey to heaven day. As Swedes in general are not the least bit religious, I'm not sure how the day is supposed to be celebrated. The weather was lovely, so I imagine that most people spent the day gardening. My husband spent the day with a friend and his backhoe doing drainage and road improvements in the forest. Big boys, big toys.

My daughter went to play at a friend's house while I went shopping for her party. This friend has a huge trampoline, so they spent the day jumping.

I went to a big store that was having a finished remodeling sale. Big mistake! The place was jam packed. They had a dozen or so items for really amazingly low prices spread out around the store, and everyone was trying to push their way through to find the bargains. An hour after they opened, when I got there, they were already running out of some things. I got a few of the things I was looking for (including a mirrored disco ball) and gave up on the rest. I also got a headache. To wash down my Advil, I bought a can of Coca Cola Zero. I'd had a bit of this in Hong Kong and thought it was a pretty good approximation of the real thing without too much of an aftertaste, but this Swedish stuff was really nasty. It must be a different formulation.

When we got home later in the afternoon, my husband was assembling one of our daughter's birthday presents: a trampoline! She was so excited I thought she might pop. We all helped put it together, then she jumped for at least another hour. I jumped a little, and it's clearly good exercise, but I started getting a bit queasy.

Since the only party decorations I'd found were balloons, I picked up a roll of wrapping paper in the desired color, cut it into strips, and we made a chain out of it. Unfortunately, the roll of paper was only 1 meter, and it didn't make nearly as much as I'd hoped for. I also didn't find paper plates in the right color or anything close, so I got plain white ones. I mixed up some food coloring, and we painted the rims. It still didn't turn out like I was hoping, but hopefully it will be okay.

Around dinner time, it started thundering--not too close, but consistent enough to keep my daughter's nerves frazzled. She refused to sleep in her own bed. Then she refused to sleep in our bed. At 9 PM the power went out, so we gave up and all went to bed in our bed. It's amazing how much space such a small girl can occupy. My back's tweaked, and I didn't sleep well. Our power was out most of the night, but everything seems to be working okay now.

Today I need to clean out the little barn and start decorating it. I'll probably go to another store to try to find more decorations. Tonight I'll bake the cake.