Birthday Party Updates...

OK. So I'm a huge slacker in the blogger world. We have been doing some home remodeling over the last month and blogging has been put on the back burner because of it. All that to say, I have some serious updating on my girls' birthdays... but there are no pics shown because my camera is on the fritz. So I have uploaded them: www.6kingspics.shutterfly.com

Sarah:
Sarah turned 10 this year and what a party! It started off with 6 ten year olds trekking with me to the local waterpark. Our plan was to spend 2 hours there then return home for hot dogs and some slumber party fun. 45 minutes later, the water park was quickly shut down because a massive thunderstorm rolled in with severe lightening and flash flooding. You can imagine what our minivan sounded like as 6 girls screamed over the lightening and thunder. After practically having to swim home from the flooding we arrived to a power outage in our neighborhood which meant Bryan hooking up the generator and cooking hot dogs in the microwave. (Go Bryan...that for sure earns you the Dad of the Year award!). Meanwhile the girls played a game of hide and go seek which was really awesome because it was 6 in the evening and very dark in our house! We eventually ate dinner in candlelight (so fun). A little later the lights came back on and we all celebrated! OK so heres the highlight of the night: The girls broke into 2 groups of 3 and had a foil fashion show. Each team had to create a fashionable outfit to eventually be judged by me, Bryan, Andrew and Ellie. It was hilarious! If you ever do this, be sure to get the sturdiest foil, bc the dollar store stuff doesn't work well. Anyway, following the foil fashion show was the blind makeover game. Everyone grabbed a partner and one girl was blindfolded and had to apply the makeup onto her partner. Whew! We laughed and laughed! It was so much fun that some of the girls washed their faces and replayed the game! Sarah tells me that her birthday party was "awesome"!

Ellie:
Ellie turned 5 in September and so we decided to have a princess tea party. Planning this party was a personal fav to me because I got to get in touch with my inner girly-girl! All the girls dressed up as princesses and showed up at 9:30 for the tea. I ran a purple tablecloth in the yard as a 'red carpet' to officially welcome them. After the girls played for a while, we made princess wands; which became a glorified glitter fest! Anyway, after crafts, we had tea. Many of the foods on the table were 'brought to us' by some of the disney princesses. Snow White brought apples, Aurora brought fairy wands (pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate and rolled in sprinkles), Belle and Chip, of course, brought tea, Cinderella brought pumpkin chocolate chip brownies cut into magic slippers, and Ariel brought goldfish (wink). I put cards out so the girls could see who brought what. Each girl got a cupcake topped with a mini tiara with a suprise ring hidden inside the cupcake! It was so cute to watch them carefully pull apart the cake to find their own rings! And of course the birthday girl had a full size tiara on her cake! As a side note, I used the new Betty Crocker Frosting Creations Cotton Candy flavor and it was suprisingly yummy on a chocolate cake! Plus it was the cinderella blue color so it went perfectly with the party theme. After the tea party, Ellie opened her gifts and then Sarah led the kids in the song "I'm a little teapot"! It was a blast of a party!

One of the things my mentor taught me years back was to always train our kids to serve their party guests. Sarah has this down pretty well. But Ellie is still learning this concept. And so I spent a few weeks preping her to bless her friends at her birthday party. I will say that Ellie did that very well! She served and thanked her friends and made sure that each one left with a well stocked goodie bag (Thank you Best friend, by the way, for all those goodies you sent us.) And because Ellie was outwardly serving, she didn't have a spoiled-it's-all-about-me attitude!