All twelve of my blog readers know I love a good party and that I am sucker for a good theme! Which means . . . it’s time for my one blog post for the year!

As 2020 unfolded and started showing signs of, well, being 2020, I started to worry about how we could celebrate Milly’s 4th birthday.  As much as I love the idea of a car parade, it seemed like so much effort for some of our family.  An hour drive to honk for a minute and turn around to drive home just seemed like a big ask.  I had resigned myself to packing both kids in the car for a day to drive around to all of our family’s houses and drop off cookies when, it hit me!  The lemonade stand my kids have been begging for all summer was the perfect drive thru birthday party for our Pickle Pete!

I don’t love evites, but with just two weeks to put things together, a homemade evite is what she got!

Originally, the party was planned for Saturday, her actual birthday.  The weather looked miserable so we postponed it to Sunday and as fate would have it, the weather was perfect Saturday.  The four of us celebrated at home with a safari themed lunch and a lemon theme dinner.  Milly picked pizza as our entree!  This year’s cake was supposed to be a lemon, but I think it more closely resembles a yellow football.  Usually, I have a friend from pastry school help me if I need piped flowers or words on the kids’ cakes, but Covid forced me to up my game.  Two and half hours and a few youtube videos later, I produced four flowers!   Our yellow football cake was served with the kids’ favorite, Graeter’s black raspberry chocolate chip ice cream.

Neither the kids nor I really like cake, but is it really a birthday without cake?  To be sure, I always make a small one for the kids to blow out the candle.    The real treats, however, are the cookies I get from my friend Katie at BlueSkyBakeshop – I shouldn’t tell you who makes these amazing cookies!  I already have to plan ahead like 6 months in advance to get on the calendar!  Nevertheless, she is the best and always perfectly interprets my vision into the most incredible edible art!

After spending the perfect family day at home on Saturday, we woke up Sunday to cloudy skies, 65 degree weather, and a persistent drizzle.

The forecast showed it would be pouring before our party was over.  With the dunk tank already being set up in the front yard, (yes, Andrew insisted on a dunk tank!) the show had to go on.  We set up Milly’s lemonade stand with the rain still sprinkling and hoped for the best.  By the time our first customers arrived, things had warmed up and Andrew was starting to regret the dunk tank just a little bit less!

The best part of the dunk tank of course, was the “lemon” inside.  While these parties are mostly my brainchild, Andrew always contributes one great idea to the party.  Worried our guests needed more than lots of sugar, Andrew peeled down (lemon pun!) to his unitard and  suited up!  God, we love him!

Dunking Andrew was cathartic for most of us and the kids had so much fun working the stand and greeting their customers.  They finished off the evening with a dozen cookies and a swim in the dunk tank!  I’m biased, but I think the juice was worth the squeeze!

Thanks to everyone who came to Milly’s Lemonade Stand and made sure Milly’s party didn’t sour!