The Best Birthday Wish Ever

Lennon's Star Wars Birthday Party

We had Lennon's 4th birthday party today from 2-5. We only invited a few friends to keep it small for him. In the end we had 10 kids and 7 adults. Lennon had a great time. He got up this morning and helped bake the cake with Shelby and then Shelby decorated it like a pro, as usual. Mia had offered to do face painting for everyone and they all lined up early to get in on the action.

Mia at her face painting station.

Almost right off the bat, Lennon wanted to get to the presents part of the party.

We stuffed this pinata so full that literally nothing else could fit inside it. The kids each had at least two turns hitting it before it came down and the mayhem began.

The awesome R2D2 cake Shelby made in a cake pan that Granmommy had from when he was a kid. It even still had the decorations and everything.

I cannot believe this little guy is 4 years old! He's such a little ham all the time. At the ER on Thursday, the doctor asked me if he was "always this cheerful?" and I have to say that most of the time, he is. He's turned into a giggly, silly, smart little person who I have so much fun with. Happy Birthday Lennon!

Mia's 9th Birthday Party

We have been having so much fun with Granmommy and Gaga in town and have done so many fun things while I will get around to posting about at some point, but first here is Mia's party which we have spent so much time planning and anticipating. Mia was so excited to have an Ancient civilizations party and we lucked into so many great thrift shop finds. It really is incredible the great stuff we found for as little as $2. We kept the invite list down to just a few girls this year and they all spent the night, so it was also Mia's first multi-friend slumber party. Everything went really well. The girls all got along and had an awesome time.

The awesome evite that Shelby made for us.

Granmommy helped the kids make clay pyramids a week or so before the party. They all seemed to enjoy the process and everyone's pyramids turned out great.

The finished result after I spray painted them gold the night before the party. The sand we made them with was not a satisfactory color to Mia, so we went with a gold finish.

Our other craft project was this faience plate made out of salt clay. We saw one similar to this at the Museum of Fine Art when we went last month and Mia was super excited to try to make one of our own.

We ended up using almost two whole containers of blue food coloring to get the color just the way Mia wanted it.

After mixing the colors in we had to let it air dry for several days. In the end up put it in the oven on low for an hour or so to get it dry before we painted and glazed it.

By the time we were ready to paint it, Mia's first friend had shown up for the party so the two of them, along with Gaga, painted the design on the plate. I think it turned out so cool.

I had planned a hieroglyphics scavenger hunt, and got this great idea of the newspaper mummies from another blog. Gaga and I sat around watching Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra a few nights before the party making these and filling them with the jewels for the girls to decorate their sandals with at the party.

I filled each one with rings and sparkly clips, then tucked the jewels inside the folds before wrapping on top of the jewels and putting the gold bangles on the bottom of each one. I left the bangles off of the mummies intended for Lennon and Mateus. They had a different craft and their mummies were filled with snakes.

Fully wrapped mummies

We found this ash tray with Egyptian characters on it at a thrift shop and I made a little clay pyramid to hold incense for the party

Again, we found the golden chargers which we used as party platters and the Grecian looking jug at a thrift shop for next to nothing. I think I paid $1.40 for all four chargers.

We saved toilet paper rolls and cut them up and spray painted them gold so that everyone had lots of golden bracelets when they first showed up at the party. We put out a couple of Egyptian themed games as well for playing while everyone was filtering in.

We had several books on both Egypt and Greece set out for the girls to look through

The first official activity was applying Egyptian eye make up to all the girls. Only one didn't want it.

Posing like Egyptians

One of the clues for the hieroglyphic scavenger hunt. They started in the house with a clue taped to Egypt on our wall map and it went a few places before landing them all in the sand box which they had to "excavate" to find the 10 clues, or puzzle pieces, which told them the final place to find the missing tomb with all the mummies in it.

"excavating" the sand box

Uncovering the mummies from the tomb.

Then we took them all upstairs to unwrap them before heading to the kitchen to do our crafts.

Mia with her friend Niamh and her gift

Shelby helped the boys make clay Ankhs. An Ankh is an Egyptian good luck charm

Mia picked this activity out of a book months ago. It called for regular flip flops spray painted gold, but Granmommy spotted these fantastic bamboo flip flops at the dollar store and they were even better!

The girls all did a totally different job on their sandals and they were all very pleased with the outcome.

Just before the feast was served

Cleopatra's Feast.

Mia read lots of books and helped me figure out what to serve. We had chicken which more likely would have been duck, melon, grapes, dates, honey barley flat bread which we made, cucumber, celery, hummus and "wine", sparkling juice.

Here they are toasting to themselves

I had the toilet paper set up for the girls to do the mummy wrapping game and the boys had another idea of what would be the most fun...

Bowling them down!

Mia has the sweetest friends. At one point while they were watching Fern Gully later one friend said "This is the best slumber party EVER!" That's pretty much the best thing I could have heard. I hope Mia feels the same way.

When it came time to brush teeth and get in bed it turned out that only one of the girls had even brought her toothbrush. After a good laugh, most of the girls brushed their teeth with their fingers and they were all asleep by about 11:30. They didn't sleep long though and were back up by 5 AM! Again, they were so good though. Shelby got up and started Jim Henson's Storytellers Ancient Greece for them and they watched that and had Greek yogurt for breakfast and I didn't get up until 7:30 with Lennon. I can't currently find my camera and all the pictures from Saturday are still on it, so those will have to wait. We made Greek peplos, which are sort of like togas and they did some "Olympic Games" and had lunch and cake.

P.S. I found two giant, gross boogers on my wall today. I know I have sufficiently freaked my kids out about boogers, so I know it came from one of our little friends. I literally almost threw up when I cleaned it off the wall. Eww! Boogers are so icky!

One More Thing

Mia is also VERY into anything ancient Greece or ancient Egypt. She loves it all.

Birthday Ideas

In case you were wondering, both my kids would love cowboy boots for their birthdays. Mia is in a size 13 and Lennon is wearing about a 10.

Mia has a list a mile long, but a few of the items listed are:

-colorful duct tape for making duct tape wallets

-Colonial dress for herself and her American Girl doll/dolls

-Stationary

-little fairies for her collection

-American Girl stuff for any of her dolls, but she wants to start collecting the stuff that goes to the actual dolls, so Samantha, Rebecca and Elizabeth. Clothes for the best friends would do just as well; Nellie and Felicity.

-The Chronicles of Narnia series

-Scattergories

Both kids would also love a renewal of our science museum membership. We haven't been in ages and they are aching to go back.

I can't think of anything else for Lennon at the moment. He doesn't really play with toys. He mostly likes to play what he calls "imaginaries." He likes to help me in the kitchen and he LOVES any kind of machine. He recently has become very interested in pipes and sewage systems. We got some books from the library and he is really into them. OH! I just thought of something. He would love one of those models of the human body that you can find at places like The Lakeshore Learning Store that you can take apart and put back together. They have one that is table top size and he thinks it's the coolest.

I'll keep thinking.

Le Premier de Mia's Ballet

The file of her actually up on stage is too big to upload directly to the blog, so I'm going to have to put it on Youtube and then post the link on here. She had fun and did a great job. We brought her flowers and The Brills also brought her a beautiful bouquet and also brought Mateus and Bianca single roses wrapped beautifully. It was fun that although none of our extended family could be there we at least knew a few other kids who go to the same dance school. Her friend Nora from school last year dances at NSB as does Naomi, Biance and Mateus. We sat with The Lima's at the recital and went out to dinner afterwards with The Brills.

Claire was having a hard time getting Bianca's hair up in a nice bun, so they came over before we all headed over to the recital for some help and I snapped a few shots of our little ballerinas

The recital was at Memorial Hall in Melrose.

Mia being silly at Polcari's, where we went to dinner.

Lennon definitely enjoyed dinner more than the recital.

Mia and her best bestie ever! They are so sweet and love each other so much. It is going to be heart breaking for them to be separated next year.

I'll try to get the video up soon.

The Results Are In

I just received the test results for Mia's end of year assessment we did a few weeks back. In her lowest category she scored equivalent to what a student in grade 5.5 would score and in her highest category she scored the same as a student post high school. She scored above average on almost everything. First year home schooling: a success!

Way to go Mia!