Another year older and wiser too!

All and all I think Emily had a good birthday.



Saturday we had a party for her. She wanted to have people over to swim at Grandma Mum's house. So in an effort to keep things simple, I emailed a few families of kids she likes to play with Monday morning. To see if any of them were available to come for swimming, dinner, cake and ice cream. Again, the idea was to keep things simple - as if I can ever do that.

Diane made that much more possible by taking care of all the dinner food! What a blessing. I told Emily more than once that if it weren't for Grandma, the party wouldn't be happening.

In the end we had 20 children ... 20! I need to stop assuming no one will come when I invite them. Emily was such a beautiful little hostess. She said hello to everyone as they came, and then as kids got ready to leave she made sure they each went home with a gift bag and thanked them for coming.

In an effort to reduce the number of kids in the pool at one time we tried to offer a variety of other activities... jumping in the castle, running through a sprinkler, sliding on a slip-n-slide, and decorating birthday hats and crowns inside. GR got 16 crowns from Burger King that we spraypainted gold - it worked beautifully! [Saturday AM when I found out I was going to have an extra 5 kids, I went and got 8 sponge bob party hats and spraypainted them so I'd have enough if I needed them... of course I didn't but that's beside the point!]

We had pom-poms, glitter glue, foam stickers, and sequins! The girls made their crowns before everyone came so we'd have a few examples, and I helped Sam make a party hat with the pom-poms. He called his a "Happy Birthday" hat... it was so cute!

Poor Emily, minutes before the party was to start she leaned over the table to reach something and put her tummy right across her freshly written blue glitter glue name... thank goodness for washable Elmer's glue and Grandma's closet full of little girl clothes!

*****

Today started with donuts and balloons from Grandma, a tradition Diane started two years ago. Thinking it would be fun to do something a little different, she brought jelly donuts instead of plain glazed or chocolate cake donuts... by their reaction, it was obvious I have failed to teach my children manners... Diane was extremely gracious about them telling her exactly what they thought of having jelly donuts instead of plain glazed. Sam ate his and Diane and I throughly enjoyed ours, but Rebecca and Emily squeezed out the jelly as best they could and ate around every portion that had jelly touching it. I guess it's good to know we still have lots of work to do as their parents, our jobs certainly aren't in jeopardy yet.

We had the missionaries over for dinner, at Emily's request. We let her pick the menu... Chicken and rice (we did Hawaiian haystacks), pickles, deviled eggs (the egg things with the yellow stuff on top), apple juice. And we sent them home with a plate of cup cakes leftover from the party -- we made 70 I think... we had a slight cake mishap.

Grandma and Grandpa came for cake, ice cream and presents after dinner. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting with chocolate ice cream - per her request. Emily got an extra set of Wedgits so she could build more things (and share more with Becca and Sam) - she got a large set for Christmas, an umbrella, a slinky, games for her computer, a doll carrier and doll quilt, stamps, candy, light-up balls, a replacement Elefun game, and lots of fun hair accessories.