Party time

We made it.  Mia's 5th birthday party is complete.

All in all it was quite fun.  Last year was an insane birthday party.  Not only because I was extremely pregnant, but also because we invited all of our normal friends we would invite as well as all of Mia's classmates.

Back in September the first kid in the class to have a birthday invited everyone.  At that point if you didn't invite every person to the party then you were the big jerk.  So, last year not only did we have lots of kids, we had kids we didn't know very well and parents who came over and sat on the sofa reading a book, big sister who texted the whole time and smelled like smoke, and then the super mom who was just a little too intense and wanted to help with everything.

But we also had the moms we know and hang out with and that part was really fun.  Because we have awesome people in our life.

This year, however, we got exclusive and only invited people we really like.

We stole our South Dakota friend's advice and "painted" the snow with colored water. Then we put stickers all over little mailboxes, and what girl doesn't love stickers?!

Everything was awesome except for a three minute block near the end of the party.  That three minutes had the intensity of dynamite.

First Mia fell off of the bench at the kitchen table.  Then Rachel fell off of the chair at the dining room table.  Then Maggie fell over the baby gate onto the concrete floor of the office where we had locked the dogs up.  All this happened at the same time we were trying to get everyone to sing Happy Birthday and Mia to blow out her candles.

That was jeopardized because after the candles were lit and we were singing I leaned down to let Mia see the cake and lost traction.  The cake slid with frightening speed toward the cabinet and the floor and somehow, in a Jedi-manuever I still don't know how I executed, I caught the cake and righted it, going down to one knee for the save, singing Happy Birthday the whole time.

It's a wonder I didn't smash the cake and light the house on fire!  My heart stopped beating.  The song ended with me on my knees in front of Mia, holding a safe cake, her smiling in happiness, and blowing out the candles.

While my highlight was saving the cake, the highlight of Mia's day is that she received a pack of gum.  I had to pry a piece of watermelon ecstasy out of her mouth at bedtime.  She loves gum.  A lot.

That's the story of Mia's birthday party!

As we were doing bath time tonight and I was collapsed in a heap on the floor, I watched Penny throw up and then eat the vomit again.  

Besides being grossed out and groaning at having to clean more, it reminded me of my mother.

(Stick with me, there's a rabbit trail here but it will come back around.)

My mom has always cautioned against re-dating someone you'd broken up with.  She says there is a good reason you broke up in the first place.  She crowns this philosophy with the phrase, "Not even a dog goes back to its own vomit."  (The idea being that you threw the relationship up because it wasn't good, don't gobble it up again.)

But, obviously, dogs go back to their own vomit!  I witnessed it tonight.  So now I'm left, puzzling.  Does that Texas phrase actually go, "ONLY dogs go back to their own vomit" insinuating that the person who does that is a dog, which might be an insult worthy of a gunfight if we lived in Tombstone?

I just don't know.  There are so many, many things in this world that I don't understand.

But for now I'm going to comfort myself with the knowledge that the girls are asleep, the dogs are asleep, and I have a half sheet of cake available to eat as my bedtime snack.

Yum, yum.