Salad Days: Sierra's 10th birthday party

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Sierra's 10th birthday party

Sierra remained fairly undecided on the theme for her birthday party but had mentioned from the beginning that she wanted "Coraline" invitations. Throughout the month before her party she also talked about swimming, watching "Coraline", painting with buttons. So, we did it all!

She started off only inviting three girls and then (as always) it evolved to about nine. A few girls road the bus home after school and the others were dropped of early. I figured having it on a Friday, when they had gotten up early, would lend itself to an earlier bedtime! The girls spent a couple of hours swimming (again, wear them out for bedtime), had pizza, and then set up to paint. I had planned to hot glue the buttons onto the paintings and had been envisioning the girls using a few buttons throughout their project. Wrong! Give them props and they will use them! I spent a LONG time that evening gluing them on. The paintings were all unique and beautiful, though, just like each of the girls. We had cake and ice cream and then the girls settled in to watch the movie.

I had overestimated my abilities to handle the party by myself. Luckily, Alyssa's mom, Lynn, hung around to keep me company and take one of the girls home after the movie. Little did she know that she would be my right hand at the party! I was so thankful she was there to help out (and she's not bad company either!). Brad came home around 8pm to a houseful of girls and promptly went out to cut the grass... after 12 hours of work. Just four of the girls spent the night which as a nice amount. Bedtime wasn't too terribly late and Sierra had a great birthday party. A few of them even swam the next morning! Due to the school budget cuts the teachers are in need of lots of items for their classroom. Sierra decided to collect school supplies for her party this year. She was able to drop off three large bags of supplies the next week!