Cups, Cookies, and Chalk

We've been trying to make an effort to get to know the folks at Lucy's school a little better. What better way than to throw a Valentine party? Lucy colored invitations for all the girls in her class. And she was SO excited for the day to come. Every day, she asked how many days were left. Isn't this age so fun? The world is so exciting.

I wanted to have the whole party outside so we decided to fancy up the deck a little. I asked George if he could make a partial prom ceiling with plastic and in typical "Class of '95" fashion, he said, "Of course I can. We had the best prom in the history of Grantsville." I was smart enough not to say anything.

"Hey, where's the party?"

Elise was pretty excited too.

We had 9 girls and Elise. And two moms stayed to help out, which was so nice. We started off by decorating fancy Valentine glasses with stickers and pipe cleaners. The girls came up with some mighty fine masterpieces.

In a circle (starting at the left): Vanessa, Alana, Meleanna, Sydnee, Halle, Lucy, Maya, Rachael, Kawehi

I tried to come up with some fun Valentine's games, but most of them required more work than I was willing to put forth. So we resorted to some classics. We played "hide the Valentine pony" (one girl hid it and the others tried to find). This was a hit for the first five girls, but then it started to loose its excitement. One by one they wanted to join Elise filling water cups at the water station.

The next game was the "keep the balloon in the air" game where we kept adding balloons one by one to see how many they could keep up. It even worked in a "Hawaii sized" backyard. :)
The last game was "draw conversation hearts on the sidewalk." Really this was to give me some time to get the cookies ready. And it totally worked. The girls had a ball and wrote some cute messages (with cute spellings) and drew lollipops (I saw one girl pretending to lick hers over and over. ha!). This crew (above) is making "pixie dust" by gathering all the dust from coloring the same spot over and over. Then they dipped their hands in it and made prints all over. Fun stuff.
The two girls on the other side of the pixie dust crew were the "cleaner" artists. The rest of the girls were covered in chalk by the time this was over.
The last activity was decorating cookies. Valentines day is never complete without some of my grandma's puffy sugar cookies with mint icing. Yum! The girls made plates of cookies for their teachers and parents, sibs, etc. Most cookies had LOTS of marshmallows, candies, etc. More junk on top of sweet frosting is always better, right? :)
This time I was smart enough to dress them in my old t-shirts. We ended with serving pink sherbet floats in their fancy cups.

All in all, everything went great. Lucy and the girls were thrilled and laughed a lot. They also squealed really loud when they saw a gecko on the wall while decorating cookies (hilarious because those are all over the place)... very girly. It was fun to meet some parents and visit as they picked up their girls. Even though I tried to keep things simple, I admit I was pretty tired running around and was dead asleep by 9:30pm.

The biggest hitch was Austin. The night before he threw up and had a low grade fever. "Oh no. What do I do now? Should I cancel?" He woke up in the morning still not feeling his best and needed lots of cuddling. I decided to risk it... gave him some Tylenol and prayed he wouldn't come down in the middle of the party throwing up. The gamble paid off. He slept for 5 hours straight. Unheard of for this kid. Is it terrible to be thankful he was sick enough to sleep through the party? Ummm... probably. BUT it was sure a lot easier only having one toddler running around (and luckily it was the easy one who LOVES to hang out with the BIG girls). Austin woke up happy and feeling much better. However, the next day he tripped over nothing and face planted into the kitchen floor. He tore his frenulum (apparently that is the "thin piece of connective tissue between the gums and lip" - yeah, anatomy was never my thing either.) He looked a bloody mess for quite a while. Rough couple days for Austin. George says his chances of being a "inside-the-mouth model" are over. Hope he still has a future in something else. :)