I stand corrected

My niece's seventh birthday was not, as I had earlier reported, Hannah Montana-themed. But my niece lives and breathes Hannah Montana, has decorated her room with Hannah Montana posters, dressed as Hannah Montana for Halloween and now lives a secret double life as an international pop star with tragically overprocessed hair ... so you can see how I might have accidentally jumped to conclusions on the birthday theme. NoFo regrets the error.

Instead, the party was cheerleader-themed, complete with actual cheerleaders from my old high school who taught my niece and her friends actual cheers:

After the cheerleaders left and we sent the little girls home to dream big cheerleader dreams, the domestic partner and I both admitted we avoided watching the cheerleaders work with the girls out of fear that they'd think we were ogling them. But then I realized these girls hadn't even been born–hell, there's a good chance their parents hadn't even yet met–when I was attending their high school. And I quickly decided I didn't care if they thought I was straight.

Once we'd cleared out all that proto-estrogen, we scrubbed the house, hauled out the dress-up (meaning not plastic cheerleader-themed) tablecloth and got the house ready for our Mom's pink-themed, 20-year breast-cancer-survivor party. We'd spent the day before making cookies and other pink foods, but the only picture I took was of the sugar cookies whose pinkness doesn't really translate well on my camera phone:

We had toyed with the idea of making boob-shaped cookies and limiting each guest to only one, but in the end we decided that might come off as indelicate. So we went with the hearts. Which are always a safe option. Except maybe for a divorce party. In any case, we rounded out our pink-food collection with salmon, shrimp, pink-chocolate-covered strawberries, and the best reason ever to survive cancer: a pink punch made of Sprite, pink lemonade concentrate and raspberry sherbet. I think I chugged a whole gallon of the stuff. And now I'm growing what looks to be a third breast right in the area where my abs used to be.

My family also all wore pink shirts for the party. And when I get ahold of the pictures, I'll show you how we looked as the Osmonds. In the mean time, we're just thankful that my mom is still alive and healthy 20 years after what scared the living crap out of us. And that raspberry sherbet tastes so darn good melting in a punch bowl of Sprite and pink lemonade concentrate.