tomorrow is the princess's tenth birthday

today, sunday, we had a party. It went well.

For a while I was afraid twenty people would show up and overwhelm us. Princess had xeroxed the invitations last week and took a bunch to school. I was mad.

Then we thought there might only be one person -- her current best friend.

As it turned out, two others came. One a fifth grader, the other in a 4/5 combo. Both girls were very polite, charming, quiet....quite unlike Princess, really (and her friend, who can be loud and wild too). Both the wife and I found that interesting.

We decorated pre-fab gingerbread houses from Ikea. The construction was not sturdy; the majority of houses collapsed at some point during the party. But the girls had a lot of fun. The wife took pictures of them working on the houses, quickly downloaded and worked up some pictures to tape to the back of ornaments as keepsakes.

We did not use the frozen chicken wings or the cans of pineapple that princess wanted to buy at the grocery store yesterday. We did use the sour worms.

All in all, a most successful party. Which didn't stop princess from yelling and slamming the door in my face after everyone had gone.