Lena's Mom, Dana had taken the entire planning of the party out of Lena's hand and barely allowed her any input. Her mother was known for taking everything to extravagant indulgence and beyond and she cringed just trying to imagine the scene. Her Dad had been coming over to Lena's to hang out just to get away from it all.

Callie had tried to get out of napping but Lena had threatened to shut down the party if she kept resisting so finally she gave in. And now, at 1pm with the party starting at 2, Lena's mom had sent a car for them because they were going to stay the weekend. The car turned out to be limo. Lena took one look at it and knew trouble was ahead.

So, when the time came, all Lena, Callie, and Gretchen had to do was to show up and be impressed. And impressed they were! Her mother had gone with a carnival theme. There were game booths, face painting station, and food trucks with different types of cuisine around.

Lena had not been doing too well for the past week anyway. Stef was still not talking to her and she had no idea how she was going to make things right with her nor what was going through her head. She wasn't even too clear on why Stef was so upset. She had known that getting involved with someone was going to be messy when they were pregnant from someone else, but thought Stef had accepted the situation that they were in.

Lena grabbed one of Callie's hands and Gretchen grabbed the other and they began making their way around the party.

Cococococococococo

The invitation had said dressy casual but Stef had interacted with Dana enough to know that meant they were still going to be thoroughly scrutinized. For Brandon, she had chosen a nice short sleeve shirt, vest, a tie, and a recently new pair of chuck taylors. That way he could still run and play all he wanted.

She and Sharon had both chosen to wear long summer dresses. Sharon had on low heels while Stef was wearing strappy sandals with hers.

They were just about on the way out of the door when the bell rang. Her Mom ran to answer it while Stef hunted for her keys and the gasp at the door made her head snap up.

"Uh, Stefanie!" Sharon gasped.

Mike was standing in their door dressed up with a big smile on his face. He was holding up his car keys and twirling them around his finger.

"Hi Daddy. I thought I wasn't going to see you until Wednesday. We're going to Callie's birthday now." Brandon had a worried look on his face. He loved his Dad but didn't want to have to choose between him and Callie's party.

"We're on the way out the door Mike. What do you want?" Stef asked impatiently.

"I'm here to escort you all to the party." At Stef's shake of her head, he cut her off before she could start. "Look, it says here the invitation is for the Foster family. That's us. I thought we could go together."

"Absolutely not!" Stef had really had enough of him already.

"The invitation is made out to all of us. And it says that without the invitation that no one is going to be allowed into the party. So, it's either we all go or nothing."

Stef was about to really lay into him but she looked over at Brandon's face who looked like he was about to cry. She took a deep breath and counted to 10, then 20, then 30 just for good measure before she could trust herself to speak.

"Mike, you were not invited," she began with her voice tightly controlled. "This is a children's party and –."

Mike cut her off before she could go any further. "Exactly! This is my son's first birthday party that's a real party. I want to be there for our son. You can either come with us, or stay." And with that, he grabbed Brandon's hand and walked out the door.

Sharon and Stef looked at each other and then Sharon shrugged and said, "He's really making this difficult for himself."

Stef shook her head and muttered something that sounded to Sharon like, "This is not going to end well," underneath her breath.