As hard as it is to believe, Callie turned 9 and is one year away from double digits. She was especially excited because this year was going to be a slumber party celebration. And from what we soon realized this appeared to be a trend for 9-year-olds. She even attended a sleepover birthday party the night before her very own. And she had two more lined up for later in the month. Our strategy for the party was to keep all the girls as active as possible for as long as possible so that bedtime would be as easy as possible. Hence, the balloons, each of which had a time written on the outside and a note describing the scheduled activity on the inside.
Reese was just as excited as the birthday girl, and neither one could wait for the guests to arrive. We harnessed this energy by giving them several last minute tasks to get ready for the party. But in the hour leading up to arrival all they could do was run around, climb in the tree in the front yard, and think about how much fun they were going to have.
As Callie's friends arrived, she quickly introduced them all to our front yard tree, which tends to be a climber's paradise. Kids love it and it tends to add another 5-10 minutes to the hellos and goodbyes with parents coming to pick up their children. We took this opportunity what most likely would be our only group shot of the festivities. They already were a pretty energetic crew.
Once everyone had arrived, the time had come to pop the first balloon and find out what our first activity was. In a calculated move, we made sure the first activity was outdoors to give more time and space to those preparing dinner. Fortunately the weather was nice and the sun was still shining so we were in good shape.
Since all of the girls had either been a Shark or was a sister of a Shark we began the night with some fun soccer drills. John was in charge of leading these activities and did his best to keep them entertained. Thus he combined shooting with keeping a cone on your head. We are not sure if all of the girls appreciated John's humor, but we know Callie did.
The situation outside devolved relatively quickly, and before we knew it John had a bow in his hair and had lost control of the situation. He called out for help and Sarah let him know that dinner was ready.
The next series of activities were all based around the Minute-To-Win-It games. In the first one, each girl had sixty seconds to try and work an oreo cookie from their forehead to their mouth without using their hands. You can see here that hands quickly became optional, especially for those who didn't want to lose their cookie to the ground.
Up next the girls had to successfully transfer M&Ms from one plate to another using only a straw. They were all pretty confident when this picture was taken, but soon learned that it is not as easy as it looks. If you know the competitive spirit that lives in our house, you also know that we take our games seriously. Yes, this means that we kept score for each activity with the idea that we would have a grand prize winner. This meant that we had some pretty fierce competition for most of the evening.
Lydia and Harper are showing off items necessary for the next game, Junk in the Trunk. The object was to get the six ping-pong balls out of the kleenex box before the 60-second timer ran out. Not only were points distributed for completing the activity within the time given, but a strong effort could also give you solid numbers as well. None of the girls failed when it came to effort.
Holland and Callie definitely enjoyed this activity and went to extreme measures to empty the boxes. At one point both did full back bends trying to get the last of the ping-pong balls free. This activity certainly was a crowd pleaser, and all the giggles show that they almost forgot it was a competition.
Of course we had to stop for cake and presents, and everyone was ready for it by this time. Sarah had truly outdone herself by making a fully three-dimensional soccer ball cake. Most important, the cake held together over night and maintained its shape for as long as we needed it to.
The next stop was candy and a movie. Reese and her friend Lola got to the candy buffet first and both made very good use of their time. In retrospect, an all you can eat candy buffet might not have been our best decision for this party, but you live and you learn.
Keeping with the soccer theme of the party, the girls watched a few episodes of the series Kicks, which is based on stories by Alex Morgan, the famous American soccer player. The girls seemed to enjoy the show and this allowed time for us to recover from all the activity and prepare for the final push to bedtime. And when bedtime came, it actually went relatively smoothly. And by relatively, we mean it only took them about an hour to get them to sleep.
The next morning, following a breakfast of waffles with whipped cream and chocolate chips (we offered strawberries but they weren't as popular as the chocolate chips), we held our medal ceremony. All of the girls had performed admirably, but Holland took the top prize and first pick of the candy medals. She was followed by Lily, Harper, Lydia, Callie, and Kennedy. Callie loved being the person who officially placed the medal over each participant's head. All had great attitudes except for Reese, who was upstairs crying because she wanted the Skittles and they had already gone to someone else. Life is tough when you are the sister of the birthday girl. We were excited to survive our first slumber party and will recover over the next three years to be ready to host one for Reese.
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