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

"Tea" Party is a Relative Term...

One of Emily's Birthday presents this year was a "tea" set and some other toy cooking items from Aunt Jana (Boschi). The kids had played with tea sets at Grandma Higgins's house and at friends' houses, but we only had generic cooking/serving toys at our place. Needless to say, Emily loves it, and the Mike and Natalie are right there with her! (Although I think Mike's favorite is actually the toy blender --- he makes "milkshakes" for the tea parties....)

Jana has wanted for a while to have the kids and Evie (our cousin, Jana's granddaughter) over for a little tea party at her house. Carmen (Jana's daughter) wanted to be in on the fun, too, of course. The problem is that she's getting married in just a couple of weeks; so they had to squeeze the party in amongst the wedding preparations!

Being LDS, none of us actually drink tea, but that's no reason to miss out on a chance to dress up and eat fun treats! Jana's teapot was filled with milk, and the "creamer" contained chocolate syrup, and as an added touch, the "sugar" bowl was filled with Hershey's kisses.

A good time was had by all, and, most miraculous of all (to me), I didn't end up scrubbing chocolate out of the party dresses, either!



Thanks Jana and Carmen!!!

Party - Party

Well, we had a lot of fun this weekend --- 2 birthday parties to attend!

First, Mike and Em were invited to a party for one of their friends from church, Nathan. His parents arranged for the kids to tour a local police department, and then everyone went back to their house for cake and presents and such...

The kids had a lot of fun - Thanks for inviting us, Nathan!

Later, in the afternoon, we went out to Aunt Jana's for our cousin Evie's 3rd birthday. The kids had fun sleddingand watching the Daddys fire off some model rockets (but I was inside with baby so photos are courtesy of Evie's mom, Melinda). When the kids were thouroughly soggy (on account of it being 50 degrees out!) everyone gathered inside for cake, ice cream, and presents.

Again, much fun was had by all! Thanks for inviting us, Evie! You make a lovely little Princess!