Schäfer's 3rd Birthday Party

The morning began when Schäfer woke up and said he wanted a chocolate cake. Good to know because that’s what we baked last night.

Anyway, the morning was one hour and a half of crazy, but the rest of the day was perfect. We had to buy milk, make pudding, put the cake together, welcome Yu Jie Jie and all take showers before 9:15am.

Thankfully, we arrived at the play area before anyone else. The kids started playing and suddenly the genius of having the party there set in. In total, we had 12 kiddos attend.  The party was 3 boys and 9 girls. At this age, it doesn’t matter.

Schäfer’s birthday party arrangement has been tricky. We can’t have his party the weekend before because that’s Christmas. The weekend after is New Year. It wasn’t until I started planning his party that I learned that New Year’s was a three day holiday in China were lots of people return to their hometown. Thus, Schäfer’s four buddies: XiXi, YuanYe, He Shi Rei and Bao Bao were unable to attend because they had all gone to see relatives for the New Year.

The party was pretty simple. Everyone was welcome (via text message! ha!) to start playing at 9:30am. Cake would be served at 11am. This worked well because people could arrive when they wanted and we could invite our friends (grown-ups) to come by the mall at 11am for some American cake.

Gao Chen Miao                                                         Zhao Zhi Yi

Shi Yu Wei                                                                   Chai Xin Yang

Liu Xing Ran                 Liu Yi Ran                               Cai Xin Yi

Cai Mu Rong                                Pan Zi Hai

Hu Quan Yu                                       Kang Jia Yi

The morning was spent playing… (see video below)

building towers…

playing with stuffed animals…

crawling in tunnels…

Introducing the dump truck birthday cake!

We crumbled up this 9×13 dark chocolate cake, added one batch of the Nanamaw’s pudding from scratch (recipe coming soon) and crumbled up chocolate cream oreos for texture.

I asked Hubs if we should have doubled the recipe to better fill out the truck (who knew?), but Hubs assured me that there was a ton of cake.

The oreos added great texture for the “worms”.

We tried to take a group photo before blowing out the birthday candles. From the top row down:
Cai Mu Rong
Zhao Zhi Yi, Liu Xing Ran, Liu Yi Ran
Schäfer, Cai Xin Yi, Gao Chen Miao
Shi Yu Wei, Pan Zi Hai, Kang Jia Yi, Hu Quan Yu
missing: sweet Chai Xin Yang!

(There were other kids playing in the play area as well so it was hard to realize that we were missing one of our party.)

Happy 3rd Birthday Schäfer!

all finished.

cleaning up.

back to the tunnels.

After another hour of playing, Schäfer came back for another round of cake!

wresting with Papa.

Happy 3rd Birthday Schäfer!

Schäfer played non-stop until 2pm when we finally got him to put his shoes on to go home. He was easy to put to bed. Yu Jie Jie came home with us and took a nap in our bed.

Once the kids were down, Hubs said, “See. Isn’t it nice to come back to a clean and organized home?” After seeing how hard the kids played, I was so glad that we opted for the play area. I don’t know how I could have managed all that energy in our living room!

Then, the kids played until 6pm when Yu’s Grandma came to pick her up.

I did three loads of laundry and a big load of dishes. I also started taking down our Christmas tree.

Today, I connected today that the reason I feel so out of sync with New Year is because in my mind Schäfer’s birthday is the 30th – not January 2nd. I now feel like it’s 2010 since we’ve had his party. Talk about running behind.

Final party thoughts:

• I could not stop praising Hubs for making the decision to host the party at the play area. None of the kids had played there before (including Schäfer). All the Mom’s and Dad’s seemed to be having a good time too.

• The play area was incredible. They checked everyone’s temperature and sanitized everyone’s hands upon arrival. They were also constantly cleaning the mats on the floor with a lint brush – of all things!

• We couldn’t rent the area exclusively so when we announced (by wireless microphone) that we were going to take a photo for the friends of Schäfer, quite a few of the 4 and 5 year olds came to get in the photo. Thankfully, one of the Dad’s gently escorted them out.

• Also during cake time, some of the kids wanted to come join the party. But this was minimal.

• I was really nervous about the cake because Chinese cakes are very light and not sweet. This chocolate, pudding, oreo combination went over well. People were asking for seconds! Even Hubs who doesn’t like cake at all said it was good. (Hubs: It was the pudding.)

• We did send out an additional text asking people not to bring gifts. Of course, everyone brought a gift, but they were very, very small.

Two things I wanted to do, but didn’t:

• make cute invitations. I ran out of time so I invited people face-to-face or via text message. This worked out well.

• give party favors. This didn’t happen because I went on a 12 hour excursion the day before.

Here’s a video of all the non-stop action:

Schäfer’s Third Birthday – The Party from Easternjourney.com on Vimeo.