The Last Hurrah

Theia's fourth birthday and a pending move from Maryland drove us to invite our girls' favorite five friends for an overnight party.  We thought one last hurrah would be fun before we moved, and so did they.

We started with dinner:  pigs in a blanket and macaroni and cheese, all the birthday girls' requests.

After dinner, the kids played a rousing game of Zingo!  If you haven't played it, you're missing out.

After Zingo! we took the customary party hat picture before all the hats got lost, torn or squished. 

When it was obvious we could hold them off no longer,

we gathered them around the table,

and they anxiously awaited the arrival of the cake.

Theia requested a pink blanky cake for her birthday this year.  I've no former experience in making blanky cakes, so it took lots of head nodding and convincing that this looked like a blanky.  Four year olds are harder to convince of these things than three year olds.

Regardless of whether or not she believed me that the cake looked like a pink blanky,

she happily blew out the candles (with some help from Xandra),

and everyone dug in.



After cake and ice cream we played some slumber party themed games. 

After sorting into two teams, we had a relay race where each child had to dress up in the slippers and robe, grab a bear, lay on a pillow, snore loudly three times, get up, put the bear back, remove the robe and slippers and tag the next person in line.

After the complicated and rather confusing relay race, we played musical pillows. 

When the music stopped everyone found a pillow to lay down on.

Then we locked all the kids in a room and left.

While they were in there we hid their bears and/or blankies.  Then, against our better judgment, we let them out of the room to find their bears and blankies.  This game turned out to be the highlight of the party and we played it several more times the following morning at the kids' request.

After the games, we opened presents, watched Winnie the Pooh and ate caramel popcorn while sporting glow bracelets.  The last of the kids fell asleep around midnight, only one woke in the night when he couldn't find his special animal,

and the first of the kids woke up around 7AM. 

After pancakes and chocolate milk for breakfast, the kids played with a flashing bracelet Theia got for her birthday in the darkest place they could find:

under the girls' bed.  I think all 8 kids were all somehow shoved under there at once.   After a few more rounds of hiding bears and blankies the moms and dads came to pick up their overly tired and overly sugared children. 

It was fun for all of us to have all these special ones together in our home for one last (birthday) hurrah.

Obstacles

Having ones house on the market with four small children underfoot can present some interesting obstacles. 

One obstacle is that on a moments notice our plans for the day can change.  For the kids, and admittedly for me, too, this is often not a welcome change, since it means we go from playing, hanging out at a friend's place, or otherwise relaxing to running around the house in a fit of cleaning and staging frenzy. 

The kids do a pretty good job of helping and not touching things once I've got them in order.  They all do, that is, except for Joey, who tends to remain just a step behind me undoing as much of my recently completed work as possible before I can stop him.  On a recent morning as I clumsily lowered my ever-growing, pregnant self to the kitchen floor to spot mop (this is no small task), Joey ran to the nearby cabinet, opened it up and started pulling towels out.  Joe and I immediately began telling him to put them back, as our initial assumption was that he was simply wreaking his normal havoc.  Instead of obeying us, he brought the towel over to where I was on the floor and got to work

helping me wipe up the floor.

He's also been eager to help unload the dishwasher (he even knows where some things go) and put things, that actually belong in the trash can, in the trash for me.   I'm thinking in a few months he can take over the folding of clothes, dusting and toilet scrubbing, too.  First, however, it'd be helpful if he'd stop walking through my dirt piles when I'm sweeping.

Aside from cleaning and staging with four small bodies underfoot, another obstacle we've faced when showing the house is what to do with the small ones when we're waiting for buyers to come and when they're on the property looking at the house.  Fortunately, the weather has been pretty mild, so one solution we've utilized is to picnic in the backyard. 

We've also gone to the mall, sat around the front room, taken walks, driven around in the minivan, parked the van in the circle and eaten dinner in there, and pawned our children off on kind friends. 

Now, if someone could help me figure out how to keep Joey from pooping and smelling up the house five minutes before we show it, we might be obstacle free.

Included

It's fun when the littlest in the crew gets big enough to be included in the happenings around the house. 

I like seeing him squish into laundry baskets with his sisters,

 

climb onto the couch with his blanky, just like sisters,

and assume a chair at the table in preparation for lunch, even if he still eats in the highchair.

I think his sisters like it as much as I do.

Maybe

Somedays the kids are at each other's throat, they fight, they whine, they bicker, and generally carry on in rather unpleasant ways.  Then, at night, when I sneak into their room to check on their sleeping forms, I see this:

 

and I consider that maybe, just maybe, they do like each other after all.

Fun For The Whole Family

One of our favorite people came for a "sleepover," as the girls like to call it in mid-January.  We had lots of fun while Beth was here.  We spent sometime watching wombat (Beth's self-proclaimed animal), bandicoot, binturong, porcupine, and platypus videos.

Beth's love for riding horses transfers over into their play:  the girls played mommy and baby horse with Beth.  She's the mommy horse and she teaches them all sorts of things like how to eat, roll in the dirt, come when she calls them, etc.

As is becoming the norm around here, the girls wanted to do some crafts while Beth was visiting.  Two kids finger painted and Theia got some help from Beth on a Busy Box project.

Joe and I also enjoyed playing a few games with Beth after the kids went to bed and the following day while visiting another family's home.  It's always great when Beth comes.  It's fun for the whole family!

A Wild Time

On New Year's Eve day, with the weather mild and moderately cool, we enjoyed a family trip to the National Zoo.  We saw a porcupines,

and pandas

(we saw some real ones, too),

did lots of walking

(well, some of us did),

and learned lots about the elephants, apes and other small mammals.

It was a real wild time.

Grand Old Time

We have a good time around our house.

Usually there's a fair amount of silliness to our good times, like Aliyah sticking her head in her pasta bowl at dinner,

or Theia dancing like a crazy person.

Most often Joe and I get to be a part of the good times and silliness, but on a recent morning when Joe and I were home, all four kids disappeared behind the closed door of the girls' bedroom.  After sometime had passed without any arguments, fighting, crying or whining, I poked my head in to investigate.

"What's going on in here?" I asked, while observing all four kids happily playing on the bed amidst blankets, pillows and stuffed animals.

Xandra proudly announced, "We're having a grand old time without you and daddy."

And they were.