James had another amazing birthday party on Sunday, and just like all his other parties, this one had to have a theme. Sometimes coming up with a theme is a bit of a challenge; other times it’s pretty easy. This year fell more towards the easy side. Stacy wanted to serve Mexican food at the party and since fiesta is Spanish for party, that became the theme.
Once the theme was picked, Stacy went to work on designing the invitations, finding shirts, and planning the food. She found James’ birthday shirt on Amazon and used a similar design for the invitations.
Stacy and I also had to have birthday themed shirts, so Stacy found a “Nacho Average Dad” shirt for me, and a “Nacho Average Mom” shirt for her. Sorry that our shirts are a bit hard to see in the picture below. The links will take you to the shirts on Amazon.
For food we talked with the owner of a really good Mexican restaurant a couple of blocks from our house to see what he would charge to cater for 30 to 40 people. He told us that he would come to our house with a flattop grill and cook everything there, which got us really excited. Then he gave us a price. Almost $1,000! We told him that we couldn’t afford that. He worked his way down to $700, which was still more than we wanted to spend.
Stacy got a quick estimate online from Chipotle, which was a more reasonable $500, but still a little hard to swallow. No pun intended. James one-on-one nurse from school had come over a few times over the summer to watch James so that Stacy could get out of the house and walk some dogs. When she was over a few weeks ago, Stacy brought up the dilemma about food for the party, and the nurse had an idea. Her husband’s friend often cooks for their get-togethers and she could ask him if he would be interested in cooking tacos for the party. He said yes, brought over his flattop grill and made some of the best tacos I have ever had! We only had to pay for the ingredients, which came out to be less than $100.
We’ve used Icing Smiles for almost all of James’ birthday cakes. They are a nonprofit organization that uses local bakers to make cakes at no charge for kids with a critical illness. These aren’t the ordinary cakes you’d find at your local grocery store. Nope. These are the kind of cakes you may see on those baking shows. They are custom made and take a lot of time and effort to make. Since James has a theme for his birthday parties, his cakes are made to fit that theme.
We had a few issues with the cake this year. The original baker that was going to make James’ cake had a family emergency and didn’t think they would have the time to get his cake done. Fortunately, Icing Smiles was able to find another baker to make his cake. The problem was that we would have to pick it up. Normally the baker delivers the cake the day of the party, which works out well for us since we’re busy getting last-minute things ready. This second baker would be unable to deliver it to us and we’d have to pick it up…in the city. It would have taken me an hour or an hour-and-a-half just to get there. Then another hour to hour-and-a-half back home. I couldn’t be gone for two to three hours the day of his party. And what if it was damaged as I was trying to transport it home? It just wasn’t going to work.
Stacy reached out to a baker that had made a couple of James’ previous birthday cakes. She came through for us and made us another amazing cake.
Stacy reached out to a baker that had made a couple of James’ previous birthday cakes. She came through for us and made us another amazing cake. We don’t have any pictures of the inside of the cake, but when Stacy cut the first slice out of the cake, Skittles fell out, just like a piñata.
Even though we had some issues with the food and the cake, it all worked out in the end. It was a little warm, but everybody had a good time. Here are a few additional pictures from the party:
