Kelleigh decided that Dyson’s birthday party would have a knights theme. Ya know, because of the playground castle and Dyson’s fixation on swords…

A dragon piñata, knight cake, and the collection of knight table cloth/napkins/plates/cups…

So, yesterday, she picked up costumes for us. Wait a minute! I didn’t agree to that!! (But, since when did my consent count for anything…)

Here is the royal family, waiting for the arrival of our court:

Kel also bought a helium cylinder. I filled up 35 big balloons and 22 small balloons (not counting the ones that popped before I tied the ribbons on…) A few of them…

Here we have a couple of ladies-in-waiting (certainly not maidens!)

As the kids arrived, we gave them inflatable swords and inflatable shields. They ran all over the house fighting. At one point, Princess Keira was fending them off with her Kei-Fu fighting technique. (No, it’s not a real fighting technique. She came up with the name - Kei from Keira, if’n you missed that…) Princesses have to get a broad and diverse education…

While most of the boys were beating up the string of little balloons hanging from the ceiling fan in the sun room, Dyson and his best friend (well, best human (and real) friend - yesterday, the algae in the pool was his friends and he didn’t want me to treat it), Nicholas, were hiding under the table in the unnamed room between the kitchen and the sun room. The table which had the cake and decorations on it. I’m not sure what they were up to, but it involved a lot of giggling…

Finally, the rain let up and were actually able to play in the castle that drove the whole dang theme of the party.

We came close to a couple of accidents as several kids walked in and out of the club house/dungeon without paying attention to the glider swing. One of the parents called it a design flaw. I resent that - if their kids are too dumb to avoid rapidly moving swings, it ain’t my fault…

After the kids used up some energy, we put up the dragon piñata. Each kid had two swings, then on to the next kid in line. Some of the kids barely made contact, while others really smacked it. Dyson was in the former category…

After four or so "rotations", we decided to let the adults take some whacks. Here’s Donna winding up for a power hit.

After the full adult rotation (which included one adult knocking the "hanger" out of the piñata, but leaving it otherwise intact), in my second "at bat", I managed to break it open. Sprayed everyone with the contents. Kel bought a package of "piñata prizes". Half of them broke after that major beat down…

Here’s the final state of our little green dragon:

One of the piñata prizes was psychedelic glasses. Almost all of them had the cardboard circles knocked out of them, but that was easy enough to fix.

Then, of course, we did the singing of the birthday song and the blowing out of the candles and the cake and ice cream. Here’s Dyson as he blows out three of the four candles. He came through on the second effort, though…

After everyone went home, Keira wanted to give the mini-ATV a whirl. While still wearing her Princess outfit. As I took the picture, I told her to give me some attitude…

Then it started raining again, so we went back in…

I think it was pretty successful…