One of my rules as a parent has been that I don’t throw big birthday parties after the kids are 5. It gets too complicated with school friends and activity friends and mom friends and far away friends and long term friends. My house isn’t big enough for that many friends, and a party bus is what floats in mind to accommodate all of them.

But Caroline fell in love with ice skating a few weeks ago after just one trip, and when she asked for a party at the rink it sounded so fun I broke my own rules and threw Caroline an ice skating birthday party on December 15th.

We only had the room space for 3 hours, with about 15 minutes to set up and 20 minutes at the end to do cake and presents, so it wasn’t my fanciest or most Pinterest-worthy party. Not even close. Which means I feel a little bit like a failure – I’m usually really good at making magic but when one wall is painted bright red, one is bright yellow, and I can’t reach the ceiling, the decorations are really limited. I had also never seen the room before, and was picturing a much smaller space so I was woefully unprepared.

Luckily, the actual ice skating part was so fun no one seemed to mind. I also brought my Keurig along to set up a custom hot cocoa bar, which was a big hit with the kids. I bought travel cups with lids and sleeves from Amazon, and had candy canes, sprinkles, whipped cream, cotton candy and other stuff to put in the drinks. The rest of our menu was just cookies and candy I made (the biggest hit was the cream cheese mints, which are also my very favorite Christmas candy). I copied almost all my food from Caroline’s first birthday menu.

As favors we had jingle bracelets from Oriental Trading and cute fuzzy gloves from Amazon. We’ve been seeing our friends wear them ever since the party and it’s nice to have given out something so useful!

Thank you to everyone who came to help us celebrate! Caroline said it was the best day of her life so far (of course, earlier that morning we also got a puppy, which might have helped).

The kids had a dentist appointment on Monday at 11:20 (our dentist is awesome and the hygienists do their appointments simultaneously in adjoining rooms so no one has to wait). Instead of taking Evan back to school afterward, like a responsible parent would, we got cheeseburgers for lunch and went to Foxwoods to go ice skating. I figured it wouldn’t be crowded on a weekday afternoon and I was right – when we got there just before they opened at 2 pm there wasn’t even anyone to rent skates from. A few minutes after 2 the employees showed up and we had the whole rink to ourselves for 30 minutes before anyone else realized it was a gorgeous day for outdoor skating and found the rink hidden behind the building.

I don’t even feel bad about Evan missing another afternoon of school. I am one hundred percent sure that he will learn to read and write and ‘rithmetic and all that good stuff. I am not sure he’s yet learned that his parents are fun and the holidays are magical and that skating is super cool.

Unfortunately, both children are terrible skaters. They’ve only been once or twice before and there weren’t any cones or chairs or anything for them to hold on to, so there was a lot of falling down. Luckily they both learned to get back up and didn’t cry or give up. I was very proud, even if they were still falling down after an hour on the ice. They both asked to go back again every day, so maybe by the end of January they’ll figure it out.

Big girl camera and iPhone photos below, so I can prove Linc and I were there too.