We were originally having an indoor pool party for Simran's 8th birthday later this month, with a store-bought cookie cake and ice cream, plus the pizza included in the pool party package from the Park District. Everything was planned and the pool was booked; we just hadn't sent out the invitations yet. Simran has rolled with the punches incredibly well when it comes to sheltering in place and all the plans it has involved canceling. We started preparing her a few weeks ago for the possibility that her birthday party would have to be postponed until her half birthday in the fall (or some other time, depending on the state of the pandemic) and that we'd have a small three-person family party at home for her actual birthday this year. She mentioned around the same time that her favorite place in the world is TCBY because of the toppings bar and that the best day of her life was the time last fall when our windows were being replaced and we had to go to Ace Hardware and they were unexpectedly giving away birthday cake in the store. She said it was her favorite day because I took her to the park later where we had a little picnic of sandwiches from home just to get away from the house for a few hours while the work was being done, and she keeps talking about that picnic, as basic as it was. So for her 8th birthday, I'm re-creating some of that. I'm also keeping most of it a surprise because she likes surprises more than looking forward to specific events (unlike myself) and because it keeps it lower stress for me. All she knows at present is that I have something small at home planned that I think she will enjoy and that there will be a small number of presents (I started ordering them from Amazon and Target weeks ago just in case shipping times got longer -- AND THEY DID -- so they've already arrived).
For lunch we'll have a picnic on our deck. I don't know what we'll eat. Maybe veggie dogs and baby carrots like she might normally have indoors for lunch. I'll just cook whatever and bring it from the kitchen on a tray. Maybe fancy mocktails (which is generally just ice + some kind of juice + sparkling water) to drink. She likes fancy drinks.
For dinner I'll make cheese pizza with black olives -- her favorite. For dessert we'll have cookie cake that she can help me bake and decorate (probably the day before), and the big treat will be an ice cream sundae bar, like TCBY but with decent ice cream instead of garbage fro-yo. I've already started collecting toppings (pirouette cookies, Oreos, malted milk balls, Reese's pieces), and at my next grocery store trip I'm going to buy Neapolitan ice cream (her favorite) and ingredients to make a batch of homemade ice cream too. She told me she wants me to make cinnamon ice cream, which wouldn't be great for toppings other than Biscoff cookies or maybe Teddy Grahams, but she'll probably mostly want the Neapolitan anyway, so the cinnamon ice cream might end up being primarily for me, which is not a problem. I asked her what her favorite sundae toppings are (so I can make sure to have them) and she unexpectedly said strawberries, so I'll buy those on my last shopping trip before her birthday (which is projected to occur sometime between 4/16 and 4/20). The true beauty of the sundae bar as I see it is that it can look like a grand buffet of choices without generating a lot of food waste. We can just package up whatever doesn't get used and put it away for later because store-bought junk food has a really long shelf life.
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