It's A Pirate Parrrrrty!

 Yo ho ho, Internet! I am WAY behind on life right now but I can't let the month pass without talking about Micah's epic birthday. We decided to do a pirate theme this year, partly because Micah's into this new Disney cartoon called Jake and the Neverland Pirates, partly because you know I love to squeeze every possible drop out of a good theme, but mostly because of this:

 

Behold! The Jolly Huske, the be-all, end-all centerpiece of our entire day. Last Fall, my cousin Mia (Hi Mia!) posted some pictures of her Brady's 3rd birthday party, and my jaw dropped when I saw his amazing pirate ship cake. So clever, so fun and so theme-y. Now, I love to bake. And I make a pretty decent chocolate cake. But I knew I needed to enlist help in order to pull this cake off. Enter Grammy.

"I'm on it!" she said, up to the challenge. And she was off on a treasure hunt of her own, looking for the perfect candies and treats to turn a box cake into this chocolate wonder, sailing on a sea of frosting with blue sugar crystals, complete with a treasure chest resting on an island of brown sugar. DUDE. Talk about taking the theme to heart. The night before the party, Mom, David and I were up til 2am finalizing the goodie bags, prepping the food, and carefully decorating the cake. Mom and David got sooo into it, meticulously placing mini M&Ms for the anchor, debating how best to pipe the frosting, and figuring out exactly which direction the parrot candle should face. They even hugged each other and squealed with glee after David's suggestion to turn some crackers into a plank. Sweets bring people together. FACT.

Putting on some finishing touches

We also made some cupcakes to round out the ship fleet. See above about taking a theme way past the point of no return. It's a problem. I can't help it. But the first step is admitting it, right?

(I just realized that this post was supposed to be about my sweet boy turning three and instead I've filled the page with praises about cake. Carbmageddon, indeed.)

Back to the party. This year, instead of inviting our friends to celebrate like in years past, we thought Micah would enjoy having his friends there. If we had kept to Micah's original guest list, we would've had an awesome time with his "best friends", Duncan and Miss Calli. Fun as they are, we thought it might be a little more lively if we invited a few more friends. So we settled on 10 of his best buddies from school (and their parents). We were a little nervous about that since we don't know them very well, but it ended up being totally great and now we have a little more to talk about whenever we see them.

We had some fun pirate decorations and dress up stuff for the kiddos (pirate hats, tattoos, eyepatches) and everyone got really festive. In fact, all of the kids except one wore a pirate hat that day. I'll let you guess which one. Yup! Cap'n Micah refused. Oh well, the rest of us went overboard with pirate fever. I might have worn Micah's pirate hat the entire party. And I might have really beat pirate talk into the ground. Avast! Ahoy! Arrrrrg!

 

 

Cap'n Cashy was the most festive of all

The summer sun was out and it was a perfect day to break in the bounce house I inherited from a co-worker (for free, no less. Thanks for getting divorced, Steve!). 

  

Future wedding slideshow shot with BFF Taryn

It was also prime weather for treasure hunting. Mom and I cooked up an idea to have a treasure hunt around our backyard, with the kids' goodie bags as their "treasure". Mom took pictures of 5 different landmarks around our yard and made maps leading the kids to the landmarks, where they'd collect a gold doubloon, and follow to the next stop on the map until they found the treasure chest and trade their doubloons in for their loot.

And here's where Mom really took it to a new party level: no two maps were the same. She made 12 individual maps with 12 different sequences between the five landmarks so that there wouldn't be a mob of parents and kids just following each other around the yard. It was at this point that Nash's dad turned to me and asked if Grammy was for rent. They were willing to move Nash's birthday from September to July if that meant Grammy could help with it. (Pimp My Party reality show, starring Gigi? Don't steal my idea!!)

Now available for bar mitvahs and weddings!

Where's the first stop on our map?

Maddox and Bailee follow their clues

Duncan and Dad on the hunt

Estee wasn't interested so her partner hunted alone

Ahoy, loot!

Nash insisted he "pay" for his goodie bag with his gold

X marks the spot

It was such a great day. So much fun, so nice to get to know Micah's friends and their folks better, so wonderful to have my entire family here with us to help us celebrate. A perfect party for Peanut. Happy birthday, buddy! Now we've got 8 months to plan for Logan's birthday. Ready, Grammy?