Emily's (Birthday) "Garden Party"

We had the idea for Emily's birthday party way back in April, and I'm very glad she didn't change her mind.... When I saw a bunch of cute little Easter hats in the dollar bins at Target, I thought it might be fun to let the girls decorate them with fake flowers, etc. Then, because we were shopping for birthday presents at the time, I realized that might be even more fun for Emily to do with her friends. So, I introduced the concept of a "Garden Party" - and told her that's like a Tea Party except with lemonade and ice cream.... The important part is you still get to "dress up"! Fortunately, she thought that sounded great --- and even more fortunately, she stayed enthusiastic about it through the ever so long months until we finally reached her Birthday!

We sent out invitations to 3 girls from church and 4 from school (2 of whom are twins, so Em got around my usual guest limit - you can have as many guests as the age you are turning). I experimented with how to attach the flowers and reluctantly settled on hot glue. (Luckily the low-temp kind held ok so I escaped without any blisters this time!) Many thanks to Julie and Cheryl for lending me glue guns!

When the guests arrived, the girls took turns playing some little card games and such in the front room and coming back to the kitchen to decorate their hats. I thought it would take me half the party to glue them, but my aunt, Jana Boschi, came to join the party and jumped right in to help! One of the little girls' grandmothers, Barb, also stayed to help, and I'm glad Natalie and Esther took an immediate liking to her!

After the hats were completed, we took the young ladies out front to play (an extremely simplified version of) Croquet. When they tired of that, we came in to open presents, and then have cake and ice cream. Then I herded them back outside to play until their parents came. I had wanted to teach them Bocce, but didn't find a set in time, so we just used the croquet balls again and bowled them at one of the posts...

All in all, I think things went quite well! (No tears, at least, which is saying a lot for 6-yr-old girls!)

Here is the little "scrapbook" we put together about the party:

This free digital scrapbook generated with Smilebox

How Much Fun Can We Pack in One Weekend?

In May I was delighted to re-connect with a friend we'd lost track of almost 10 yrs ago, Shae (Shauna) Johnson. Come to find out, she's been living only about 5 hrs away from us for several years now! Of course, now she's working on moving back to Idaho/Utah... It just figures, doesn't it!

Anyway, in the middle of July we loaded up the family and went down to see her and another "long-lost" friend, Meg Dolan, before they headed westward. It was great fun to catch up with friends (none of us had any kids the last time we talked!)and we made sure we planned activities the kids could enjoy, too. On Saturday morning, we went to a local Farmer's Market with Meg and her 9-yr-old, 'Becca. Then we met up with Shae and her crew that afternoon and we all went to a neat little Children's Museum built in an old theater...

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

The trip was tons of fun, which now means even the kids are sad "mommy's friends" are moving so much farther away!

Good Luck, though, Guys!