The pink party

My youngest daughter had been clear about it for weeks: she wanted a pink party, and daddy was going to make it. We interrogated her repeatedly on the subject, and she was (unique amongst all other two year olds in my experience) consistent: a pink party, and daddy was going to make it.

My wife was looking at being out of the country with my oldest for the three weeks prior to the party, so she was going to have to leave the party prep in my hands anyway. She kept trying to resolve the pink idea to something more specific: pink princesses? Pink unicorns, maybe? Maybe she was all about the singerPink?

But I was pretty happy with the pink theme. It was wide open, really. I spent an enjoyable afternoon with my 8 year old daughter cutting pink construction paper into various shapes: a couple of fairies, some mountains and sea gulls, dragons and bats. I even made a couple of princesses, although they ended up looking more like the Burger King.

My wife returned from her three weeks away (never again, I say, never again!) and was rather pleased with my preparations. Had I sent out invites? Yes indeed. Did I have presents for the pink princess? Certainly. Decorations? Of course. Was the barbecue grill fueled up and ready? Naturally.

Then she bumped into a friend and discovered that friend had been left off the invites. That revealed that there were three families, out of about ten, whom I'd failed to notify at all. So, not so impressive at that point.

But we had a blast. We were frantically cleaning and decorating when people started to arrive, and so we just merrily drafted them to blow up balloons and tape streamers to the walls. After ten minutes of that, I asked the Pink Princess if the place was pink enough.

"No! More pink in here!" she said. So we added more pink to the living room.

Folks wore pink by request. My giant of a neighbor had a Real Men Wear Pink T-shirt ready for the occasion.

The final coup, though? Thank you notes. I took the construction paper decorations off the walls and used them to make the notes, and had them done the very next day.