Sunday, July 12, 2009

Haven's Actual 5th Birthday!

I decided, very last minute of course, that it would be fun for Haven to have a friend's birthday party on her actual birthday. I didn't want her actual big day to be a let down since we had already celebrated it as a family, plus she really wanted a friend party! Not everyone we invited could come (it was VERY last minute!), but we are so grateful to the ones who could!! We invited older siblings and parents to hang out too. It was a fun party, thanks for coming! :)
I thought it would be fun to have a pool party in the back yard. Now that the deck is done, we can finally entertain out there! YAY! :) We had just purchased some kiddie pools to make the last few hot weeks we've had more bearable, so we just picked up a few decorations and we were in business! The party was a sort of lunch/pool party...hence the above spread of food that included home made cheese pizza, strawberries, carrots, cookies, chips and lemonade. YUM!
Our lawn is not very lawn-ish at the moment. It's way better than it was last year at this time (when we moved in, it was mostly just sand/dirt), but there are still huge patches of ground with no grass covering. I wasn't sure how we were going to have a pool party without also having mud pits (something I was NOT aiming for!) Then I spotted the foam floor blocks we had stored up in the attic. I had Sebastian crawl up there and get them all down and the other kids helped him set them up over the dirt. There were still some spots of exposed ground, but not too bad and no one made any mud holes out of them! :) The older kids had a really great time playing with water guns (and a HUGE thank you to one of the kids' Dad's for playing with them!) and the younger ones went from pool to pool to trampoline to pool again.
Before the party, Sebastian and I had talked about him giving a pet demonstration for all the kids. About an hour into it, he and Elijah went down and gathered up a few pets into containers. We had the kids all sit down and Sebastian started out with Eon, our Russian tortoise. He placed her on the deck in front of the kids and everyone got to pet her while he told a bit about Russian tortoises. Then he moved onto the remaining pets he was going to show; Packer, the Pac-man toad, Zappy the leopard gecko, and Millie the giant African millipede. The kids all huddled in close to see and pet these animals. It was fun and I think we will have the boys do pet demonstrations more often!

Here is Haven opening some presents. She got some really fun stuff! Thanks everyone! :)

1 comment: