A 4-year-old Birthday Party Under the Sea

Doesn't it seem like I'm doing this a lot? With my once every 4 years rule, this is the last "friends' party" I obligated to throw for two entire years; it might take me that long to recover! So, what does one do for a 4-year-old's party when he has requested a 3-D turtle cake for the last 11 months? Make it an "Under the Sea" theme, of course!

We decorated with lots and lots of fish cut outs. There were fish everywhere! Thankfully, I found them all at the party store so I didn't have to trace them all with my projector. Did I mention the use of fish cut outs in decorating?

Given the attention span of most four-year-olds, we provided plenty of short activities:

• 
  
  magnetic fishing with activites printed on the back (that would explain the crab-walking, fish-face-making kids)
• decorating cardboard fish to glue on gift bags
• creating octopi from paper cups and streamers
• reading the Rainbow Fish
• playing "minnow, minnow, SHARK"
• pinning fins on the fish
• breaking shark pinatas
• and (of course) eating cake and opening presents.

And, at least until we move in a few months, no party at our house would be complete without playing on the beach. Especially appropriate for the theme, too.

It was plenty of fun, even if the wind made it so Matthew only pretended to blow out candles. There was always the fun adrenaline rush from hearing helium filled balloons and/or those 4/$1 punching balloons randomly popping. Thanks to everyone for coming, especially Matthew's special request for his awesome primary teacher to attend. Also, thanks to my friend, VT, (whose blog is private) for taking all the pictures: they're great!

Help Me I'm Melting

I would like to apologize to the East Coast.  Apparently Mother Nature did not appreciate my post about perfect New England summers.  Between writing and publishing my last post, I have simultaneously melted, roasted, and had my hair expand to the size of Pluto's moon.  New England has disguised itself temporarily (I hope) as North Carolina.

Only in North Carolina I had central air conditioning.  Here I have a teeny tiny window unit that I've never turned on and looks weak enough to only cool off a closet.

I had been bragging about not using air conditioning for my third straight summer, but that streak is over!  Today we hung sheets up in the house to limit the square footage that poor air conditioner must cool off and flipped it on.  It has dropped the temperature in the living room from "I've died and ended up in hell" to "I've died and been reincarnated as a turkey in the oven."  We're hoping to hit "Maybe I still do want to live" by the end of the night.

Now we are all sitting in the living room wearing various degrees of clothing.  That is all you need, or should want, to know on that matter.  But, because I never know when to stop, at least 7/8 of us are in underwear only. 

So if you're looking for a good sweat lodge, come on over.  Just bring a towel to mop up the 8 puddles of family members you'll find inside.

If it doesn't drop down away from 100 degrees soon (that is 37 degrees for you Celsius people) I'm might consider moving to Antarctica.  Or trying to fit my bed inside our stand up freezer.  Or consider an all popsicle diet.  Or try to stop rambling (but I can't because it is too HOT to think coherently).

A Summer Evening at our House

New England may freeze you in the winter and procrastinate spring longer than necessary, but every summer I realize why people live here.

Oh, the summers!

One evening last week all eight of us seemed unwilling to abandon the late afternoon sunlight for its artificial replacement. After dining on Dad grilled burgers on our picnic table and inaugurating our new fire pit appropriately with s’mores, we all lingered in the backyard. Sitting in the rocking chair enjoying a book, I paused to check on the family.

My oldest daughter relaxed in the hammock, her teenage limbs stretching comfortably, and my youngest child snuggled next to her as they giggling their way through a picture book. My other daughter practiced her golf swing with occasional direction from her father. He watched her as he sat in my neighboring rocking chair, the three other boys piled on his lap showing him the intricacies of their newest favorite game on my phone.

The weather hovered in the mid seventies, the lingering smell of slowly dying fire permeated the yard, and the ever faithful ocean breeze, carrying the gentle sounds of waves, left a slight taste of salt as I breathed it. As the light waned, I flipped on the balcony lights to augment the light of bug-preventing candles distributed through the yard, and continued listening to the joyful murmur of my family as I read my book.

Content.

Peaceful.

Happy.

Oh, the summers!

When I think of my happy place, it's filled with memories like these. There is swimming in North Carolina and catching fire flies in Missouri; summer evenings spread over the years. The situations change and the children grow, but the feeling builds on itself. The joy now mixes with the joy of yesteryear and I keep them all to ponder in my heart.

Oh, the summers!

If you don’t see much of me in the next couple months, I’d like for you to think of me experiencing memories like these. But, if it makes you feel better, you can picture me taking all the kids grocery shopping and then hiding in the closet with a jumbo sized bag of chocolate candy (because that is also a part of my summer experience)!

A jungle birthday party and my idea of slightly overboard.

So Kirsti's party was today and was a huge hit.  I had 12 kids (plus my 6 for 18).  I thought I would give you an overview of what I consider "a slight bit overboard" on birthday parties.  If you look closely at the background, you can also see what happens to a house when mom is busy planning a birthday party for two weeks.

First of all, the cake.  She wanted a 3D monkey cake and she got it!  I had extra cake mix so she had some cupcakes, too.  Good thing, because I had to write happy birthday somewhere!
This cake was made from a 3D Wilton Teddy Bear cake pan with the ears cut off and reattached lower and hand molded Rice Crispie Treats for the hands, feet, and tail.  I came close to just adopting it and making it part of the family; I loved the outcome that much. Also, it took nearly as long as my labors to get it here.  Especially since the first go around fell apart.  When in doubt, use this recipe for 3D cakes, I guess, because that is what made it  work.

Next came the goodie bags.

• I designed and made the actual bags myself.  Fabric stores now sell gorcery bag material and mine carried it in zebra stripes.  Awesome!!  
• I also designed and made all the monkey masks.  This site has great blank templates for masks.  I'll be coming back later in the summer for crafts.   
• The foam puppets were bought in bulk and separated out.  
• The monkey keychains were the craft.   I judge age appropriate craft by my kids' ability to do it, forgetting they have extra practice in crafts, but it turned out okay and the kids liked them. You can make your own with this pattern.  Due to a lack of brown beads in all three local craft stores, I special ordered the beads. Kwik crafts had a fantastic deal and they arrived 2 days after the order was made.

Then there were the decorations.

• I printed out coloring pages of animals and enlarged them onto poster board with my tracer.  What?  You don't own a tracer projector?  I'm on my second already.  Then I traced over the lines with a sharpie, colored them all, and cut them out.  
• I filled 23 balloons with helium, 5 of which survived till the end of the party.  
• I also bought animal birthday hats, animal shaped paper plates with matching cups, some table covers.  
• God provided the rest of the decor, it was lovely.  I wrapped all our presents to her in brown paper with animal print ribbon and thought it looked fantastic!

And finally, the party itself, where I forgot to take pictures until lunch time).

• We began with coloring bookmarks backed with animal print that I laminated during the party, added a hole and some hemp rope.  
• Then we played pin the tail of the Zebra (I was particularly proud of the zebra I made, almost wanted to adopt her, too).  Then onto the beach for an elephant race. Basically you reach between your legs and take the hand of the person behind you who does the same until there is a long chain and then race.  
• We settled down for the keychain craft and then headed onto the beach/sandbar for several minutes of play.  
• Then pizza, pinata, cake, & presents.  (Sadly I could not think of a word for cake that started with "P".) 

Was that as exhausting for you as it was for me?  Probably not.

Too many hours to admit to prepare, 2 hours set up in the morning, 3 hour party, 1 hour clean up.  Four more years till her next friend party.

Here is a picture of the birthday girl opening our family presents because we ran out of time before the party ended.  Happy birthday Kirsti!!

And That is How I Learned the Value of Water Shoes

I never understood the tides until I moved to the ocean. I knew there was high tide and low tide, but I didn’t realize that low tide could at times be very, very low and other times be only sort of low. Since there is a sandbar that extends several hundred yards out from the water edge behind our house, we can judge how low the low tide really is on any given day by how much of the sandbar is showing. Sometimes an extremely low tide aligns with an afternoon hour and Peter’s day off. When this happens it is time to explore.

That is how I ended up stranded, barefoot, in the middle of a large stretch of sharp, broken sea shells while Matthew sat on my hip wiggling to reach his father a few yards ahead…

Peter had tired of exploring the sandbar last Friday and wanderlust struck. He took the kids with him to explore the area left of our sandbar, a place we had yet to investigate. Unfortunately there were two kids left on shore (they decided too late to participate). I decided I would hold off dinner prep to take them out to join their father’s excursion. By the time I reached the edge of the sandbar to hand off the kids, Peter was all the way across. Having already pointed out the adventure their brothers and sisters were having, there was no easy way out: I was crossing the bay with Kirsti and Matthew in tow, still wearing my regular clothes.

As soon as we stepped off the sandbar we noticed the water turned a reddish hue. You might think metal oxidation or red algae, but my mind went directly to blood in the water. “Directly” does not always equate with “immediately” in my brain, so we were in water past my knees before the gruesome thought struck. A few more steps and I was busy trying to recall if I knew the water depth a shark needed to swim. Hadn’t I heard somewhere it was pretty shallow? Unlike the clear water directly around the sandbar, this water was opaque. We were now up to mid-thigh (did I mention I was not in my swimsuit?) in red, possibly blood tainted, water where we couldn’t see our own feet (much less if anything swimming toward us). Memories of watching Jaws as a child flashed before my eyes.

We were already half way across the bay and I figured there was a shorter walk to shallow water ahead than behind us, so we continued forward. Peter and the rest of the kids had wandered up and down the far beach and were slowly making their way back to the return point. Matthew sat on my hip and Kirsti grasped my hand (I didn’t share my irrational fears with her, but she was smart enough to be freaked out on her own). Just as Peter noticed we were crossing, we hit the shells.

Take hard shells and break them, leaving them strewn across several yards, many layers deep. Hide your feet to prevent a visual of where you’re stepping and try to walk across. Doesn’t that sound like fun? But we were nearly across the bay and had reached shin height, semi-transparent water. Given the choice of turning around and crossing the deep, reddish, monster filled water or walking across broken shells barefoot, I choose the shells. The top of my arches still ache as I type this. We met the rest of the family half way across the shell covered sand and we gingerly tiptoed our way across the last several yards. We finally hit tide-uncovered sand that could be followed back around to our own dear soft sanded beach.

The moral of this story? There are many: invest in water shoes, be wary of Peter’s spontaneous adventures, wear a swimsuit whenever you plan on entering the ocean, and don’t let the kids watch Jaws until we are finished leasing a house just off the ocean.

No I didn't dye myself red, that is a lobster level sunburn.

The other day I sunburned myself. I was such a beautiful shade of red, I could have disguised myself as a lobster. For two days clothing was excruciatingly painful. Forget that, wiggling my nose was excruciatingly painful. Walking was a joy, stiff movements intended to allow as little contact as possible to clothes or other parts of the body. I wasn't burned enough to blister, but I think I was close.


I should know better than to create opportunities for burning, as a teenager I would sometimes burn on the 15 minute walk home from school. I don't know how I thought a couple hours sitting on the beach would be safe. I suppose I arrogantly assumed I would be OK since I had yet to burn this summer and we are on the beach every day. The last few days, I have had ample opportunity to realize I spent most of that time in the shade and late in the afternoon, so had yet to be exposed to direct sunlight: I was reminded every time I had to turn over in the middle of the night from pain on my front to pain on my back.


But the real cruelty came the evening after the burn. We went to see Harry Potter and, true to our impulsive reputation, decided to go to the hottest ticket of the summer the day after it opened and with enough time to get there 5 minutes after the movie was set to start. There were still tickets available, but we were bunched together in the front of the theater. Which meant I had a near five year old on my lap for most of the time.


So I sat through the extra long movie, with highly sunburned legs, wearing jeans, and letting a five year old (who is not exactly light) wiggle all over my lap. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch!! I expected my skin to be rubbed off by the time the movie ended. I would have been willing to scrape off my skin and replace it with frozen popsicles, if only I wasn't too wimpy to withstand the scraping part.


Anyway, the burn is finally easing up, and can let the aloe vera have a break. All that is left is to wait for my entire outer layer of skin to peal off my body and I will be back to normal. Unfortunately I can't just slide out of my old skin like a snake, it will be more of a flaky process (although if I could slide out, that would be awesome- can you imagine all the things I could do with a Charlotte shaped skin?).


I have definitely learned my lesson. I will be using my sunblock on our daily playtime on the beach, even though it is expensive and greasy and smelly. I will even put it on the kids, who all burned, but not as badly as their translucent skinned mother. Or maybe I will skip the sunblock and only enjoy the beach by the light of the moon:

We Found a Boat?

My kids are determined this came from some poor, shipwrecked boat

(even if it looks like a regular two by four).

Something interesting is always washing up in our backyard.