Happy Birthday Anna! We had an amazing "Spy Birthday Party" last night. I think all of the girls and 1 boy had a really fun time, and I must say that I really enjoyed putting it together. At first we looked at the brand new bounce house that just opened to have the party there, but when she realized that there would not be a present and a big expensive birthday party, she chose to have the party at home, and I think we chose wisely. We googled "spy parties" and got some great ideas, but here are a few of the things we decided on.

Invitations I made on Photoshop, and one mom said I forever ruined her daughter on Target invitations, because these were so fun. We put them in manila envelopes that we printed "Top Secret" on the Front.

We decorated with silouettes cut from a roll of black paper of Anna & her friend Kyle in trench coats looking in a magnifying glass, and binoculars and shooting a water gun. (That sillouette was a hit the night of the party because the kids would crawl under it when they went past it on the stairs.)

Games: First they had to be fingerprinted, and I made ID badges with their pictures. They came in disguises, and some of them were hilarious. While I made the id badge my helpers did the fingerprinting, and then they began spy training.

Spy training was an obstacle course we made up that they were timed on. Then we did target shooting with water guns at hanging paper plates. Then we did a disguise relay with 2 suitcases with trench coats, bolero hats, sunglasses, and a pair of womens high heels, and mens shoes. Then we diffused bombs (small black ballons) that I had inserted papers that said pop in a few of them. If they found a pop they got a package of pop rocks. Then we finished spy training and were awarded a certificate, and we had pizza then opened presents.

Now that they were officially "spies" I gave them their first mission. An evil spy stole their goody bags, so they went on a treasure hunt to recover them. I mixed up the clues appropriate to 8 year olds. In photoshop I flipped the type over so that they had to read it in mirror to read some of them. Some of them I gave them a number code so they had to figure out what the letters were. Some of them I scrambled the letters so they had to unscramble them, and some of them I did the font in size 4 so they had to use a magnifying glass to read it. We had 12 clues so it took them about 20 minutes to do the whole thing. I used brown lunch sacks that I wrote "the contents of this bag are classified" in old fashioned typewriter font and ran them through the printer. Very cheap. We found fun spy stuff for the bags (sunglasses, bolero hats, binoculars, toy camera, fake money, clue notepad & pencil, and a water pistol, and pop rocks).

Lastly, because they were too full after dinner we had the birthday cake. It was a funfetti sheet cake, then I made a small round cake and a small loaf pan cake that I used to make a magnifying glass. I wanted the words under the magnifying glass to be bigger, but when I also found bigger round sprinkles, it made it even more perfect. I sprinkled the tiny sprinkles on the sheet cake and the bigger ones on the magnifying glass. The kids didn't get it maybe, but I thought it was genious, and they LOVED the funfetti, several kids said it was the best cake they ever had.

In the end I think we all had more fun, than a bounce house would have been. The kids liked it because they could use their imaginations and dress up, I liked it because I saved a lot of money, and I had a lot of fun coming up with creative ways to make it seem more spy like. I must say I couldn't have pulled if off without my 2 teenagers, and a friend, and my husband. The teenagers made the games more fun, and played along with the spy theme.

Yea, not another party for 2 more years now!

Snow much Fun

We had some decent snow on Monday. Enough to take the girls sledding after our lift/spin class on Tuesday. We had to hurry though as the temperatures were going into the 50's. I'm sure that Chrystal or Sally or whatever her name ended up being, didn't last more than a day, but it was fun to make her, and to watch the girls having fun sledding.

Remember Me

It is so hard after a long absence to write a blog again, because where do I start.... so much has transpired since the last post of nearly a month ago. Namely Christmas, visit to family in Utah, the New Year.

It has all been fabulous. We had a great time in Utah, enjoying all of the snow that they have, and we haven't gotten much at all. We visited and played with cousins and had a great time.

Since returning Mikaela and Derek have gotten back into school and their hectic lives, David is back to work, and Kamryn, Anna, and I are enjoying our extended time off compliments of year-round school.

I enrolled them in swimming lessons at a swim lab, and it has been extremely helpful to both of them. Kamryn has gotten video tape analysis of her strokes to do them more efficiently. I tried critiqueing her stroke to help her swim straighter, but she wouldn't listen to me. When she can SEE what she is doing and how she is supposed to do it, it clicked and now she is doing it right after only 2 sessions. Anna did a group lesson to get that breathing thing down. She did 5 lessons in a row, and she can swim across the pool now. So I think it has been money well spent. For the next 2 weeks we are going to hit the lap pool and keep practicing. This is good for me too since I haven't been able to drag myself into a lap pool for the last 6 months.

We also got a new computer for Christmas, an iMac. Let's just say my learning curve is quite a bit longer than ALL of my kids. They had music, pictures, and movies all downloaded within hours of opening the box. My attempt at doing anything other than just opening the internet has brought me to a crashing halt. I attempted to download a movie of Kamryn swimming, but my kids are all asleep, so I failed.