Rockin' into life as a six-year-old

This fancy ball is still hanging in my living room. I wonder if it's permanent fixture. I guess you never know when you might need a little disco. (And yes we've been pretending punk and disco are closely related for decorating purposes...gotta work with what we have.)

Zoran's invitations. I had stuff to make little crafty ones, but he had other plans. He knew exactly what they needed to look like. And apparently, this was it. I'm not complaining about his finickiness this time. This was much quicker and cheaper than making invitations!

We survived Zoran's punk rock-GreenDay-rockstar birthday bash. I just realized it's been almost a week and I hadn't got around to posting anything. It seems like we are still recovering from the madness. New rule: my son is not allowed to party like a rockstar again until he is making money like a rockstar and can hire someone else to clean up after his little gang.

The kids helped me set up before the party. They all cut out all the pieces for the VIP passes and Azia & Jenna had this whole table arranged with all sorts of accessories for the guests. Everyone sort of destroyed their system, but they sure looked good once they were done!

Lettie and Paisley beading bracelets.

Jack showing off his new tattoo.

Azia spraying even the hair that will just hide under her bright pink wig. Trance looking cool in the background. One of my favorite moments from the party was right when Trance walked in (all dressed up & looking good of course) Azia saw him from across the room and said. "Whoa, you look handsome!"

Tre came ready to rock! We added some glasses & tattoos and he was really ready!

Some of the rockers! A pretty cool looking crowd.

I didn't get everyone, but close! I think there are only 3-4 of the under 15 crowd missing.

Some of the boys. When I told everyone who was outside to sit down so I could take a picture the boys all sat on one side of the hill and the girls on the other.

This is sort of what the whole party felt like... We didn't have any real games or usual birthday activities. Zoran just wanted music so we had food (a very small amount) and hair & wardrobe and lots of loud singing/playing  GreenDay Rock Band.

Ahni the drummer

Singing along with Green Day. It seems like karokee would be hard if you are just learning to read, but it didn't seem to bother them. (Or maybe it was just that Zoran has all these lyrics memorized.

The bartenders....and Eldon picking out a drink from the menu.

The most popular drinks on the menu.

Mixmasters hard at work.

Zoran opening his presents. He was pretty excited about his ipod. (And yes I think it's ridiculous that my six-year-old has an ipod, but it came free with my computer. Also, I'm hoping that now I might be able to listen to my own ipod since I haven't really been able to since about May.)

I'm so lame. Not only did I not have any cool rockstar attire, I didn't even change out of my ambulance t-shirt after my shift earlier in the day.

Zoran's cake. I didn't realize I never really took a good picture of the whole thing...which was probably fine since it looked a
little rough. It's not really fun to try to make a cake when you have no working oven. Or a real plan for making the cake.My boys may have to relocate their birthdays so Sarah has time to make them cakes!

Treat bags. Besides their new bracelets and hair extensions and necklaces and costume things everyone went home with a microphone, CD of songs (I had guests RSVP with their favorite song),  pop rocks, rock candy and more glow sticks, balloons and tattoos.

I love these CDs that look like little mini records! This is what we stuck in the bags with all the songs the kids picked out.

I did not send home a small child with a bottlecap necklace that said "Hell Bent for Leathers." I kept this one for myself. (After I found it in the pile as kids were digging through to pick theirs out!) However, I may or may not have sent a child  home with one that said "Can't talk....drinking." There may have been others...next time I should probably pay attention to what's underneath the cap. I know you can just buy nice, clean, alcohol-propaganda-free bottle caps for craft projects, but how punk rock would that be? And also, then I'd actually have to buy them. This theme party proved to be more difficult in the kid friendly area than some others.  I did try to find clean versions of all the songs I put on the CD. I suspect I was not 100% successful in that either. I'm not so good at the details. Oh well, maybe I'll have fewer kids to keep track of at the next party.

Bryce enjoying his popocks and the awesome studded wristband he made. He came early so he got lots of the good spikes. (Unless his mom or uncle was successful in talking him out of some.)

Ahni& Azia

Azia & her VIP pass. Most of the kids went home with these. Israel has a little Polaroid printer that just prints 2x3 photos from his phone camera. We were going to use that because it would be easy, but of course it didn't work when we went to print. (Even though we had tested it beforehand!) So, I just printed random candids from my camera on my regular printer while the kids were singing.

This must have been when most of the crowd was in the other side of the house. I think we had guests from 11 months (Aodhan) to Grandma who is more than 80 years older than that! Grandma thought the bartenders were pretty good. They made her some tasty drinks, but when I warned her to stay away from Azia & the girls or they might try to spray her hair purple she said, "They better not!"

Some of the food was at the perfect height for little people. I'm surprised more of it didn't end up on the floor. Probably that was because there really wasn't any. My oven decided to die a few days before the party so no one really got any food. There were a few veggie trays and some chips and spicy chicken dip and candy & other sweets. There was also a whole barbecue full of hot wings that we completely forgot about and cooked for about two hours beyond the end of the party. It was a very large, very sad pile of wasted food.

Everyone watching Zoran's birthday movie. I like that there is a huge picture of him frozen midair on the TV even though I didn't do that on purpose. 

Here it is:

Ahni & Azia making something bright and fabulous with dozens of glow sticks.

I think they felt cheated out of their typical party games. After most people had left I found these guys playing a game of musical chairs (Zoran manning his new ipod) in the other room.

And this is how Zoran ended the evening. He thought this would be really exciting and I didn't want any extra cake hanging around so I told him to go for it. I think it probably works quite a bit better if you have a cake not covered in fondant. And I probably should've taken of the top layer for him and actually served people all the white layer first. The black food coloring was disgusting! (But I actually didn't mind the white layer.)

And he's already thinking about what sort of party he'll have next year...