By now you should know. You should KNOW. Seriously, it's a running joke with my friends.
"Oh, there's a ward camping trip? Well Shelley's going to sew her family matching outfits, build a tiny apartment to bring along for her family to sleep in, put on a family skit complete with song and dance, and have a fully functioning washing machine she's fashioned in the back of her car."
I get emails from my friends like this one:
"Only you will appreciate this blog as much as me.....I could see you creating a whole company of felt people for stories, making fantastic crazy snacks and all the other stuff on here!"
When your friends have these kinds of expectations, what do you do for your 3-year-old's birthday party? Especially when said 3-year-old has expectations of her own? Princesses. Pink balloons. Castles. The most memorable party ever. (Well, she didn't really vocalize that last one, but you know she was thinking it...)
So you build a castle out of cardboard. And dragon shields for the poor boys attending a princess party. You sew a dragon costume for your husband. And make your castle invitations from scratch.
You know it's bad when, after spending 2 1/2 hours out in the garage painting a cardboard castle, and another 40 minutes securing it in your living room so a bunch of preschoolers don't destroy it, your husband finds some chains from your swing set and says, "I think I can make a working draw bridge!"
Way to be an Aagard, honey!
(The drawbridge idea was nixed, however, when time was taken into consideration. That and the fact that the preschoolers would probably end up using the drawbridge chains as weapons. And I wasn't interested in spending my evening in the emergency room. Or trying to explain to parents why their child was covered in bruises when they came to pick them up.)
A night spent with ten 3 and 4-year-olds eating pizza, making princess hats and dragon shields, playing pin-the-scales-on-the-dragon, gorging themselves on cake and M&Ms, defending the castle from a crazy 6' 4" dragon, and screaming while waving glow-in-the-dark wands and swords (and smacking each other in the process), all on 3 hours of sleep...
absolutely AWESOME!
