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.