Partay!

We've had a busy fun week. It started off with Brennan's mom, Grandma Jamie, coming up on Tuesday to help out and join in on the birthday festivities and left this morning. She's so easy to have and so helpful, it was wonderful to have her. She watched the kids for me on Wednesday so I could go to a luncheon hosted by my friend and neighbor, Amy, who is the hostess with the mostess! She made each of her guests a fabulous glitter cup. She is so fun and does everything all the way. The food was delicious, the table and her whole house was beautiful, and the guests were great. Thanks, Amy!

As you can see Grandma stays busy around here and we all love having her.

Anna opening some presents on her birthday morning

Cupcakes that night

Now for the big Nancy Drew birthday party. There's a recent movie of Nancy Drew out that Anna LOVES. When we were shopping for clothes she kept saying, "I want something Nancy Drewish". Thanks to a birthday party idea book, the Internet and the dollar store we pulled off a fun party yesterday. She wanted a late night so we invited her friends over at 5 for some games and activities, dinner and then the movie, of course. We got a fun idea for the invitations from our idea book (thank you, Allyson!). Anna wanted to make herself one for her scrapbook so here it is, the inside anyway:

We printed the info on velum and then glued it on backwards so they had to read it in the mirror for a little mystery

The birthday girl in her Nancy Drewish outfit

I sewed 8 little bags and filled them with notepad, pen, little flashlight, ink pad, magnifying glasses and a headband (Nancy always wears a headband). The first thing they did was choose a paper clip for their pencil with string around it and then tied it to the end of the string like Nancy uses in the movie to pick up the Will by the clip. We made our own Will and the girls stood on a chair and we timed them while they took turns rolling their string down to catch the papers with their paper clip. They got really into it.

Next we worked on our keen observation skills. I put 15 random things on a tray and let them look for a minute then took the tray away and they had to write down as many as they could. I was impressed with how many they got, one girl guessed 11 correctly. Not surprisingly, Abby who was watching from a distance also managed to rattle off 11 of the 15 to Grandma Jamie.

After that I had each girl make a thumbprint (with their handy dandy ink pad) on two separate cards. We put their names on the front of one card and on the other I put a number on the front and their name on the back. Then we laid them all out on the floor and with the help of their magnifying glasses had them match up the card with a name to the one with a number they they thought belonged to the same girl. I was kind of just doing this as an excuse to use the ink pad and magnifying glass never thinking they'd really be able to match them correctly but they totally studied and concentrated and shocked me. Anna guessed all 8 correctly!

We then let each girl pick out her favorite ribbon and glued it to their headbands. She opened presents, they ate pizza and pasta since Anna doesn't like pizza, had a decorated yogurt pie since Anna doesn't love cake and watched the movie. I was so grateful to have Jamie's extra hands, she and Abby totally decorated for me and saved the day. The girls were so cute and totally game. I was worried they might be old enough to be too cool to participate, but everyone of them got really into it and made it so much fun. Also, there was a little bit of a contrast between a party of 8 5 year old boys and 8 10 year old girls. Good times.

Anna and her guests with their sleuth kits and headbands