All about Grace

Well, maybe a little about David too:

David turned 36 on the first of the month.  We celebrated quite a bit.  David shares his birthday with our friend, Ryan, who turned 37, so we had the Wixom family over for a combo birthday dinner to celebrate the perfect number 36 and the prime number 37.  What nerds.   Too bad no one pulled out the camera since it was a first for the Wixoms to drive ALL the way to our house in Eastern Arizona (no, wait, just the west side of Albuquerque.)  We love ourselves some time with those W. people.  Harriet loves their little daughter Rylee SO much.  She wants to be a big sister more than anything and she would basically like to kidnap Rylee and keep her.  She was screaming at the end of the night "tell them she's our kid!!!"  

Then, on with the family birthday party.  We invited David's parents for a Sunday dinner to celebrate both David and Grace's birthday.  They love celebrating together.

On David's ACTUAL birthday - a super cool Tuesday evening...  We celebrated by... going to the school PTA meeting!  We know how to party for sure.  We had PTA punch and cookies for birthday dessert.  The real reason we went is that is when they award the student of the month certificates.  Grace was chosen from her class for February because she is so nice to everyone and so helpful.  Love that kid.  Don't worry - I don't have a bumper sticker to announce to the driving world that I have such an awesome student.  I'll just keep that to my blog and all-both of its readers.  Good job Gracie!!

Like I said... all about Grace, even on Daddy's birthday.

So, 2 days later, I started making Grace's cake.  I don't know how I got myself started in the cake decorating business since I'm really not that good at it.  Mostly, I just like doing it.  I've done it since Grace's first birthday, so the kids have come to not only expect it, but PLAN their cakes and parties for months in advance.  They love it.  I did a little, fairly lame, R2D2 cake for Grace last year when we celebrated with just our family right after moving.  Since then, I have learned how to make fondant - Grace came with me for the lesson, and she had grand plans to make a bigger better R2D2 this year for her birthday party with her friends.  It took me 2 full days, and it still was far from perfect, but I was pretty darn proud of how it turned out.  I wish there had been some adults around to appreciate it.  The kids had no idea how awesome it really was.  At least Grace was thoroughly happy and extremely excited about it.

Since she really wasn't able to have the full-on Star Wars party last year, she went for it this year and invited some kids over for a birthday Jedi Training session.  Again, not sure what I was thinking, but I looked up a whole bunch of ideas online on party blogs.  Everything sounded like such a good idea when I was imagining how it might go.

We covered the whole floor in the front room in bubble wrap.  This was one of the party blog ideas - create a "moon-walk" room.  Sounded good to me - my kids can keep themselves busy for dozens of minutes with a piece of bubble wrap.  We hung planets and stars from the ceiling.  It looked awesome and held up fairly well with a couple of kids on it, but once you had 12 kids in there being seriously wild, well, it kind of broke down.

One of Grace's requests was that she wanted a Jedi robe for her party.  I don't know when we started dressing up for birthday party themes either, but Halloween seems to have crossed over into the birthday season.  I looked at the cost of buying a robe and decided I could save myself some serious cash if I made it myself.  Oh, but I forgot I'm not that good at sewing, nor do I like it, and by the time I went back twice for enough fabric...well... it would have been worth it to just buy it.  Anything for Grace though - she was so happy.  She ended up with a pretty sweet Jedi robe for the occasion and Harriet pulled out the Padme costume from Halloween and popped in the princess Leia buns.  The stage was set to host the Jedi.

Thanks to another Star Wars mom tip, we bought pool noodles, cut them in half, bought some duct tape, and hosted a light-saber workshop.  No one could get hurt with a pool noodle, right?  Things couldn't get out of hand with foam and bubble wrap, could they?

Well, David took the biggest beating.  I had to step in and rescue him from 12 kids whacking him with their foam light-sabers.  They did kill the Sith Lord.  Whew.

Then there was some "pin the aim on the planet/ship/fighter" game.  This was actually kind of a fun "pin" game dividing up into teams to see who could hit the targets with the most points and win.  Definitely the most calm 15 minutes of the party...

Still had to feed them...

And open presents... I am so torn over the idea of opening presents at birthday parties.  It seems like these days when people host huge parties, invite the whole class and have 30 kids plus parents and siblings at their parties at some big party location, it is kind of impossible to open presents.  We found that out when we did the big going-away birthday party at the monkey time gym last year and had to take our gifts home for opening.  But, I have held to my belief that if you just have a few kids, in your home, you should still open presents.  

For the present-GIVER, I think it's so fun to see the person open your gift and see how excited they are about it and know that you provided that joy.  It's also a time when the present-receiver can express some genuine thanks in a way other than a canned thank you note (which are also important and have their own purpose.)  But, opening presents also leaves so much room open for comparing with one another, not having as much excitement over one present than another, having kids feel hurt that their gift wasn't as great as someone else's, and plain jealousy toward the kid getting all the presents.  Our world is really superficial and materialistic, and I don't want to promote that either.  What to do?  For better or worse - we opened the gifts...  Most of which were some serious Star Wars gear and legos.  One thing about it - Grace truly savors every single gift AND card.  She takes so long to open a present because she reads everything on the card, the package, and looks at every detail.  We had to rush her a little bit to save enough time for cake.  I'm quite overwhelmed, actually, at all that was given, and we are thankful for everything.  

 Time to cut that cake yet?  Instead of filling R2D2 with candles, I found this seriously awesome Darth Vader thing, complete with red light-saber candle.  It counts for 8 regular ones.

Triumphant Jedi Knights - all were trained.  None cried.  None went home in an ambulance.  Birthday girl had an excellent time, so did little sister.  I think that has to count as success.  

Happy 8th Birthday Grace!!!  You sure know how to have a great time :)