Chaos. Absolute chaos. Lara’s turned seven with a bang.

As usual, photos from her parties are blurred, ill-constructed and scarce. With about 35 kids swarming about the house like termites on speed, there was absolutely no way I could stand there snapping pics. We all had a jolly good time, though – you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Action shot of the downstairs ... this is inbetween party games. Seems as if they're chair-jousting, but one can never be sure. By this time the house and garden was overrun with them.

small corner of adults huddled up with the cheeses

The only shot of the cake, I think. It was huge and had a hammerhead on it. The icing turned everyone's tongue blue... including mine. I mean, BRIGHT blue. For quite a while.

Went outside and found them climbing dangerously in the back garden. Lovin' every minute, too. Luckily they all escaped unscathed.

I think they were yelling something to the effect of 'We're on an adventure, I'm the king of the castle', from up there, but one can never be sure.

Secondary tug of war. First one was shotless as I was officiating. Officially, the Sharks won - though it was all a bit dubious because the kids all sort of slipped down the rope towards either side ... but the rope itself didn't see to move much. I judged it more on slippage-amount than anything else, probably.

Birthday girl

the sort of decorations we put up all over the house

Look in the far right-hand coner. That's her pile of presents. This time I managed to stop her from tearing them open without noting down who brought what - hurrah! Thank you ALL SO MUCH for the incredibly thoughtful gifts... we were sitting there afterwards marvelling and wow-ing, and saying over and over "WHERE did they get it?" and "HOW did they know?" She was absolutley bowled over. It's going to take her the next six months to get through trying them all out. 

Specially-taken shot of her cotume. She was a manta ray. I thought she would take the cape off pretty quickly, but it stayed on the whole time. I was quite pleased with this one, because it didn't take long to make, it fitted first time round and it seems it was pretty comfy. Tell you what, I'm glad I got out of making her a goblin shark costume... that would have been something else. (Anyone who doesn't know what a goblin shark looks like, google it. Then reach for the Valium.)

So there we are, that was the party. The three Radmore girls turned up early (by arrangement) and helped me IMMENSELY in the final stages of prep... you've never seen girls butter bread and scatter green sprinkles that fast in your life. Quite a bit of fallout afterwards, of course, but really not too bad, all things considered. For the first time, I ditched all 'proper' food (sausages count as proper, as well as any trace of fruit) and dished out endless quantities of ice-cream and jelly. Huge success. Interestingly consumption of crisps was down drastically, but popcorn went well. Freezer now full of the remains of Hammerhead Shark cake. Would you believe, I forgot to buy/locate birthday candles, so lit seven huge ones instead - luckily she didn't seem to mind, and there was a huge chorus of Happy Birthday so all was well. Party games were much more difficult to hold together than they were in the hall we rented last year, because the kids dispersed into every corner and it was hard to keep track of them or marshal them together - still, we did a good few and it kept them occupied. Relative hits were Megamouth Stuck In the Mud, Mackerel Hide and Seek and perhaps Musical Sharks.