Party Time. Excellent. And Help A Sister Out Giveaway!

As you may know, Becky and I hosted dueling (wink wink) birthday party sleepovers for our daughters last Friday. I have to agree with her that Friday nights are the way to go. The 11am pickup worked well for us, too.

Also nice? Mark taking charge of so much of it.

He picked up Aggie and 3 friends from Whiz Kids, the after school math club/social hour. Then he was flying solo to greet the remainder of the guests while I was still at work. He said only one mom seemed a little weirded out by it, but he was the one back in the days of church preschool who had the other preschool moms over for tea after morning drop off, so I'd say he takes it all in stride.

When I arrived home it was oddly quiet. I think they were just saving up all the noise for 1 AM.

Supper time, Mark was the coordinator of personal pizza assemblage. All the girls gathered around the island table in the kitchen, smearing sauce, sprinkling cheese, and bursting into spontaneous song. Really, they did! Pretty good harmony going, too.

Oh! Almost forgot. Mark also made 2 kinds of cupcakes earlier in the day! No! Make that 4 kinds, because there were big and little cupcakes of both chocolate and white. Thank goodness he made so many, too. My! Can they eat.

Mega-Triple-pack of CapriSun: Sucked down.
Mozzarella cheese sticks: Chomped on cold, straight out of the refrigerator.
Bacon-wrapped jalapenos (not for the party, I was just trying to use them up before they went bad.) : The perfect dare food for Truth or Dare.
Cans of whipped cream: applied to cupcakes or just squirted directly in the mouth.

They were whirling dervishes of crumbs and spent drink sacks.

Around 9:30pm we had a boredom issue with 2 of the girls in spite of their nail polish, makeup, and wigs. Though the group did their best to re-engage them and I bribed them with a a roll of paper for pictionary, they weren't having it.

Mark had retired to our bedroom, Lily was having fits because she didn't have a friend over for herself, and I had visions of bickering and tears into the wee hours of the morning. Possibly with my own tears mingled in for good measure.

But! Saved by the pay-per-view, though the selections weren't so hot. There were tons of horror movies. That's a big fat NO, though I remember many a grade school sleepover with Friday the 13th or Halloween. (It was somewhere around this time that I emailed Becky in my desperation. What does she reply? Neener neener, mine are all asleep like angels, and they rubbed my feet and made me tea before they went to bed. Or something like that. I can't remember exactly.)

We managed to come to an agreement about The Box. Now we just had to make it 20 more minutes until it started. They all gathered in the living room peaceably enough. They even invited Lily to join them. Popcorn was popped. And I wish I'd taken a photo of all the girls together in the living room, every single one on some sort of device: cell phone, iPod, whatever, all at the same time, faces quite serious. I have no idea what they were doing but it was funny and thankfully only lasted a brief time before they went back to normal 11 year old noisiness.

Sam and I watched the movie in my room, cracking up when we heard all the girls squeal and jump in unison during the startling parts. I nodded off towards the end (ya, it was that good) but woke to the sound of 9 girls all talking at once, discussing the movie and scavenging for food again.
It was all so enthusiastic and good-natured, I had to let them get some of it out of their system, though I wanted very much to sleep. 2AM I drew the line and they all went to bed. Phew!

Morning came and Mark the trusty fry cook was back on duty: Bacon and pancakes for our little girly army. Pretty much went off without a hitch. It came to mind that there are families where there are that many children at breakfast all the time, and then I didn't feel so overwhelmed at the thought of adding a fourth to our brood.

And that was pretty much that. The girls trickled out one-by-0ne and we counted it a success. Party accomplished. And hats off to my husband.

What else?

Roller skating birthday party that evening. Heck yes! I love me some roller skating.

My body has me on a short leash. I'm starting to figure out the routine of a queasy bedtime, 2AM restless legs attack, 5AM night sweats and then eventually up for work. The other night I went to bed around 7:30pm. Probably not a good habit to get into. But I was so refreshed the next morning. hee.

We Love It, Don't We? Giveaway?

Sounds like a plan to me, Becky! Who wants some beeswax and honey, honey?

Here's what we gonna did: You give a sister a hand in figuring out a domain name for our new website and I'll put your name in the pot for a sweet giveaway drawing. And, if we go with one of the suggestions , the suggester gets a sweet giveaway, too.

It's going to be a brand new website, never had one before, where we'll showcase our honey and have it for sale, with the future possibility of adding more bee products (pollen, wax, etc.) and beekeeping supplies (hive bodies, tools, etc.) as we get the hang of it. We'll still have the seasonal farm market here (Bedillion's Farm & Fruit Market,) and advertise it a bit, too, but I don't think we'll be doing any produce sales online. So it's mostly 'bout the bees.

The more suggestions you have, the more we'll throw you in the pot. Sound good? (Because if it doesn't, you can tell me, 'kay?)

Alrighty then, the clocks ticking. What's say we run this puppy 'til, um, Friday the 12th at 11:59pm. (I don't know why. I'm so bad at making rules.)

OK? Ready. Go! (And thanks in advance!)