"Clue Live" = Awesome birthday party

Kamryn's 12th birthday party was "Clue Live". Kamryn loves to play board games and she loves acting and dressing up so this party was perfect for her.

We invited 7 other girls so including her we had 8 clue characters. We changed the names to fit an all girl cast. Josephine Scarlett because everyone loves Scarlett. Patricia Peacock also stayed. We changed Mary Gold, Pearl E. White, Black Widow, Lady Luck, Miss Rose E, and Violet Plum aka Miss Vi. All the girls came dressed to the "T" in their designated color. They are such hams when they get to dress up.

We sent mysterious invitations telling them they were all suspects in the mysterious murder of Mr. Boddy.

For decorations we made the rooms of the house fit the rooms in Boddy Mansion. At least we did the best we could with the rooms we had available. The front room with the piano became the Ball Room, the study was of course the Study, we made a corner of a room with a bookshelf, a reading lamp, and an easel with a dictionary the Library, the kitchen was the kitchen, the nook with our dining table all set with dishes was the Dining Room, the family room was the Lounge, our entry way was the Hall, and our back patio with some big plants set out was the conservatory. We decided to do away with the Billiards room because we had 2 more characters in our game.

When the guests arrived I took pictures of all of them alone and in a group with the weapons. I transferred their picture to clue cards that I had designed on photoshop. I had previously made the room cards with pictures of our own mansion rooms, and the weapon cards. While I made the cards the girls made their own party favors in the other room. We made headbands with silk roses that I had made prior to the event.

Then they were ready for the mystery treasure hunt. I made the clues relate to the board game. They found a clue in every mansion room. Some of the clues were riddles they had to figure out, some of them they had to hold to a mirror because they were printed backwards, and some of them were just silly requiring them to sing while they walked to the mailbox to get a clue, or to eat a bowl of jello without hands to retrieve a clue at the bottom. The girls Loved it!

The treasure was party favor bags personalized with a ribbon the color of each character.

Then we had them sit in the Ball room and fill out a 3 course menu that had been prepared just for the guests at Boddy Mansion. The foods and utensils all had silly unrecognizable names. They numbered 9 items with a 1,2,3 so they got 3 items for each course.

It was really hilarious to watch them eat spaghetti with just a knife. We did not take the previous course away when they got the next course so that they could eat dinner. Before they were served and between courses we had them study the centerpiece of the dining room table. I had old books, candles, silver tea sets, beads, old photo frames, coins, teacups, and anything that I could find that looked old. We told them them would want to study it because it would help them in the future.

When dinner was finally over (I had a maid, a butler, and a part-time detective/ server all family members dressed up helping me serve the food because it is very confusing to get each girls order right.) We went back to the Ball Room for instructions to "Clue Live" Just like in the board game we took cards out so that not even I knew who the murderer was, or where, or with what. We combined 2 girls to make 4 teams of 2. We gave each set a clip board with the clue sheet, and they had their teams cards. Then we gave each girl a "clue quirk". I had this idea from "Quelf" where each girl has a character trait that they have to do throughout the game. For example one girl had to raise her hand and say "I feel a question coming on" each time she asked a question. Another girl had to snort like a pig when she laughed. If they were caught not doing their clue quirk the girls had to decide a trick for her to do. This did make the game more fun, but the quirks got old after a while. Okay.... since we didn't have dice the girls had to answer questions about the items that were on the dining table. If they got their question right they moved to any room they wished, if they missed it went to the next team. We didn't make the questions so hard that they missed very many. The game lasted for quite a while. I started cleaning up and didn't pay very much attention until the end. I guess 1 team either sabotaged the game on purpose, or they honestly goofed. Instead of showing their card to the other teams they told them they had a card that they didn't have. So when it came time to solve the murder. They were a little confused. But it ended okay. The part-time detective/ server was the little sister and she was very excited to arrest the murderer and use her hand cuffs. She had made a sign on her bedroom door for the jail. The murderer ran and screamed and everyone chased. It was good impromptu fun.

Then we had the ice cream cake. It was a 9 x 13 cake I cut in half and put ice cream between the layers. We frosted it and sprayed the top with the black cake spray. With white frosting we made a chalk outline of a body. We put the clue character game pieces around the outside. It turned out very cute.

For their thank you cards, we gave them each a card with a group photo on it, and wrote on the back.

Commencement

I can blame my lack of posts on numerous things.... soccer season, busy kids, I'm busy, etc. But it comes down to Lots going on, but not so much to post about. I should have posted about my trip to Boston to watch my sister run the Boston Marathon but I never did. I haven't done a lot of things that I used to do and I'm not sure why. What I have been doing a lot of is stressing, and worrying. It's not healthy for me, and I need to stop.

Well I will quit worrying about why I haven't posted and finally get around to the reason for this post and that is Mikaela's graduation! Yea! She made it with NEARLY a perfect GPA. It was so close she could taste it. 3.98. IF ONLY has been said alot around here mainly by stressing, worrying me. One teacher gave her a B for a 89.7 %. He was supposed to round up to 90, but he refused on his own principles and gave her a B instead of an A. The other B was for a PE class that was so big she didn't have time to complete her final and she got a B in that. Other than those 2 B's she did amazing in high school and I couldn't be any prouder of her. She ran cross country, played soccer , Jr. class President, and Sr. class Vice president, a school play her freshman year, and orchestra for 2 years. She took 3 AP classes and we are anxious to hear if she will have to take Biology 100 at BYU. Yes her plans are to attend BYU in Provo in the fall. She wants to major in elementary education. She did her Sr. Project in a 2nd grade classroom. She taught them to do sign language. She enjoyed it quite a bit, and the teacher said she will make a great teacher.

Mikaela's class thought they were jinxed. Their Prom was post poned because of a big snow storm, their Sr. Project presentations were post poned because of another snow storm. So they thought their graduation would also be post poned. Wouldn't you know it Friday was supposed to be rainy and cold. But it turned out to be better. The sky was even sunny during the ceremony which was in an outdoor ampitheater. It was perfect. The next day was a graduation party for

7 friends. The weather was perfect for that too until the last 1/2 hour when the sky opened up and it started to rain. Yea! we had a great weekend with Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.

Congratulations Mikaela! We Love You!

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.

Happy Birthday/ Anniversary

Yesterday was a BIG day around here. David and I celebrated 20 years of being married to each other and he celebrated his 4_ Birthday. He said in 2 more years he will have been married to me as long as not being married to me, so you do the math.

We always do Something for our anniversary, but it may not BE on our anniversary. Being the big 20 this year we had high aspirations to go on a cruise or somewhere, but then things we would like to have come along, and soon poof! the trip idea goes out the window. Since the completion of the bathroom the corner has been begging for a TV, so I got David a TV and wall mounter for his gift. We virtually do not have to come out of the bathroom anymore. With the heated floor it has been by far the warmest room in our house lately, so we pull up a chair and watch our favorite Christmas shows in the bathroom, or do like Kamryn & Anna and put pilliows in the bathtub and lay there.

As for me, for the last 5 years I have been thinking that on my 20th anniversary I "needed" to have a new wedding ring. I have waited patiently for 5 years for this time. I gave subtle hints over the last 5 years, which I don't think he ever really got. So a couple of weeks ago I started giving bigger hints, maybe not so subtle. He got the hint. We went ring shopping on Saturday, and I got a beautiful ring that I really love as much as the first one.

I Love You now David even more than when I married you 20 years ago. We have 20 years more wisdom and experience, and now we know each other so much better than when we married. We know just what each other needs to be happy, we know how to help each other through stress and hard times. You are my best friend that I turn to with good news and bad. I look forward to the next 20 + years!

David's work took him to lunch at an italian family style restaurant, then I made chinese food for dinner. He was full, but ate dinner to be polite. He wanted a simple chocolate cake this year, so that's what he got. Then of course he has to have ice cream with it. So after 2 big meals this was what he had room for desert.
Happy Birthday David!

It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas

Today's photo journal is brought to you by..... (I just had flashbacks to Sesame Street and telling you it was brought to you by the letters M, C and by the Number 8!) Okay, on with the photos.
This is a pre-view of our card we are sending. Benji wouldn't look at the camera, but it was good of the rest of us. Posed, but not too posed.

Yea! This was the year that I finally got my "pretty tree". But not without a lot of grief from my children that their ornaments had been downgraded. I wanted to get a live tree again this year, but the tree on the right was our first artificial tree bought on clearance in 1993. It has had a long life, and spent the last 5 years in our crawl space. It loses needles like water through a hose. David had a Charlie Brown moment and felt sorry for the tree and decided to give it one last harrah, so it became our kid tree this year. I think it is standing a little taller don't you? Even if it is a little bald on some of the branches, with all of the ornaments it looks very festive. Every year the kids get one ornament that says something about things they did or liked that year. So multiply that by 4 kids, with one being 18 Christmases, we have a lot of kid ornaments. Throw in all of the homemade ones from pre-school through Elementary school, and it is loaded. A lot of sentimental ornaments. This year Mikaela couldn't find 1997. She was very distraught that she couldn't remember what it was, so I guess the time has come to make a record of the ornaments lest we forget.

By the way, I love the pretty tree too, it is light green and brown. I got a lot of ornaments at after Christmas sales last year. The photo doesn't do it justice.

The first measurable snowfall, and no one wanted to go out with Anna to build a snowman, so she did it all by herself. Pretty good eh?

Grandma Molyneux brought a gingerbread house with her at Thanksgiving. This has become a tradition each year that we decorate a house. The kids thought up the powdered sugar snow to make it look wintery.

Today we put the lights on the outside of the house. I love Christmas Lights!

This was Kamryn's performance at the Littleton Downtown tree lighting. She disappeared while we were waiting. I found her waiting in line with all of the kids who wanted to go on stage and sing a song while we waited. She was the 2nd to last kid to go up, and she sang "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" She did a really good job, and wasn't the least bit nervous.

Stories in Hand

I reluctantly did an online class led by Jessica Sprague who I like to read her blog http://www.jessicasprague.com/ . She is a digital scrapbook teacher for Creating Keepsakes, and she has begun her own online digital scrapbooking classes. Anyway... the class was free so I thought what the heck. I am not a writer, but maybe it will help me to remember some of those forgotten stories I have hidden away in the dark recesses of my memory. It started last week, and I still haven't completed the binder that we were supposed to have printed and bound, and looking all cute, but I did get to the memory triggers. She compares getting our stories out to snorkeling and scuba diving. First you kind of flit around on the surface looking and remembering, and then you dive deep and find those stories. It worked! I started last night writing about the greatest life lesson I learned from my mom, and ended up writing about clothes that my mom made for me and even the time she really challenged herself and made down filled "puffy coats" for my sister and me. This was way before internet, so I am not sure how she ever found the resources for the down filled coats. This was in the 70's. My mom could make anything I thought, including down filled coats. Jump forward a few more years to when I was in junior high. My mom made my jeans. Unfortunately the jeans were harder to duplicate to the real designer thing. Even though she studied the pocket stiching and everything. She really tried, but the unappreciating teen that I was they weren't close enough. I wore the jeans until a boy brought attention to those jeans and caused me mortal embarrassment. I'm not sure what he said, but I remember the feeling I had. Isn't it funny that we can remember emotions like that so well.

Anyway hats off to mothers that do the very best they can for their children even when it can never be enough (according to the kids). I understand now that I am a mother how much you just want them to be happy.

Hallowe'en Chronicles

What a really fun, and busy Halloween weekend. The planets aligned so that we could have Halloween on a Friday AND very warm temperatures! It was the perfect night for mischief.


Because it was a weekend, we had all kinds of things going on...
Trick or Treaters for sure, Halloween scary movies with a basement full of teen-agers (sure why not), and maybe a birthday party.


Kamryn and Anna were Batgirl and Wonder Woman. They didn't even have to cover up their costumes with their winter parka's this year.


Derek and his friends all dressed up as "each other" He is dressed up as his friend Tyler (next to him) who is dressed up as another friend who used to go to a school with uniforms. Since they weren't allowed to "trick or treat" being 15 years old, they went "dance or treating" They had a pretty big group of kids, and they would ring the doorbell, then dance, then run away when they tried to give them candy. By they way the girl with the red wig and soccer jersey is supposed to be Derek. Some of the kids dressed as other things too, he doesn't really have a friend who is a clown, or a Barney fan club member.



















Mikaela and her friends had a party the week before where she dressed as her favorite singer
Bryce Avary from The Rocket Summer. Here she is standing by him, but apparantly I neglected to take a picture of her dressed like him.

On Saturday morning Derek informs me that his friends are all coming over that afternoon for a birthday party. This was after I have spent several weeks trying to pin him down on some details. So he texts everyone that morning, and then he works out what they are going to do. My job, to come up with a cake, and food. This is a prime example of why this kid drives me crazy. I don't work like this. I need a plan, I need details, I need more time! Is this too much to ask? Apparantly... I need to NOT make such a big deal of things, and just let it happen... according to Derek. In the end some of the kids couldn't come because they had to babysit, or they had other plans. But it was all right with him, they still had fun.

Happy 15th Derek!

Now he starts Driver's Ed next week, and before we know it, we will have another driver in the family! Wow how time flies!

Lessons Learned

Mikaela finished her cross country season last week, and it has taken me all week to find a good story. We will ultimately decide that it was a lesson learned for me.

Mikaela was very pumped for this race. It was like a gift to her because the week before had been a poor race for her, and she didn't finish very high. She thought she would not be racing at Regionals. Regionals decide who will race at State, and Mikaela has had her goal since early June to go to State this year for her final year of high school cross country. She had it written on her board and everything. So back to the gift... She was still fighting some congestion, but we were doing everything we could to break it up, and she was feeling better. She was even assigned a number with 2 "eights" in it. Her lucky number! Being in the JV race was good for her because she would know what the slowest runners got in Varsity, so she would know what time she had to beat to qualify for state. We put the time into her watch so she could pace herself. She did amazing for the first 2 miles. We ran to cheer her on at various check points, and her pace was perfect, not too fast, but enough to stay just in the lead. Then at the last check point before the finish at about .6 of a mile to go, she was starting to fade. We cheered, and tried to spur her on with her hopes of going to state. She was still in 2nd place, and could easily make it. By the last 100 yards she had slipped to 3rd, and we yelled to get her to pick up the speed, but her legs were lead by this point, and there was no telling them to go faster.

Being the competitor that I am, I was not sympathetic to leaded legs. I thought if she could just tell her legs to move it, they would. That is how it happens in all of the Disney movies right??? If you want it bad enough, then the body should comply. It wasn't a Disney finish as much as I wanted her to win for herself. In the end she let 2 more girls from her team whiz by her at the finish. She didn't beat herself up about it, she didn't cry, she was too tired. She gave it all that she had in her that day. Maybe she would have beat herself up, if I hadn't been giving her grief about "giving up". I was not the good supportive mom that I should have been. I was too busy being disappointed. How are mom's supposed to turn off how they are feeling, and say what they should, like "Good Job! What a tough race, I know you did your best!" I really wanted to say those things, but I just couldn't get it to come out.

A week ago when we thought she wouldn't be racing at regionals, I had said all kinds of supportive things like "Winning wasn't the most important thing you learned this season, learning to love running, and the friends you made, and the experiences you had, were more important." But I said those things when she finished really far back because of illness, this week was not the same.

So what did I learn? I should have remembered what my mom always told me "If you can't say something nice... don't say anything at all." But I didn't do that... and I just hope that I can earn my points back with her. Luckily she is a very forgiving girl, and I didn't teach her that either. A week later, I can say I wouldn't trade her for any State Champion runner.

Mission Accomplished!

Yea! My first marathon was a good experience on almost all accounts. After nearly 6 months of preparation for "the hill" and "the heat" I must have been prepared because I don't think they got the best of me this weekend. Okay... granted it was an unusually cold and rainy day in St. George. They seem to only have rain when I come to race there, or so I have heard. My last triathlon race there was cancelled due to slick roads. Oh well, as my preparation would have it I was well prepared in running in the rain. Both of my 2 longest runs were also in the rain, and I loved it. In fact I would say my 3 BFF's in this race were the rain, gravity, and Advil. All of them helped me to get way under my goal time of 4:30, (but secretly hoping for 4:15.) Actually I was able to run 4:11:17. As I was running I kept waiting for the infamous "wall" to hit me. When would I hit it? How hard would I hit it? How much would it hurt when I did hit it? And you know- I never hit it! I did feel tight in my legs, which I stopped to stretch a few times, but I think the Advil kept me from feeling the pain. When I crossed the finish line I was SO happy with how it went I gave the guy handing me my medal a hug. He said "You did it!" I said Yea! I did it!

It is kind of surreal to accomplish things that you have been working towards for so long. It has left me feeling a little empty the last few days. My SORE legs have kept the memory alive for me. I am just now able to go down my stairs facing forward and not backward to keep from screaming. As much as I have been in pain, I like the goal that the marathon gave me.

David made 2 of his 3 goals too. #1 he beat his goal time of 4 hours. He got 3:57: I am so proud of him! #2 he wanted to feel good at the end, as opposed to feeling awful after his last one in Houston when the temp was 80 plus degrees. He has been a little more stiff than me, but he feels good. #3 he will hopefully do, and that is to keep running after his recovery.

Partly intentional, and partly unintentional I didn't take my camera to the race, because I didn't have anyone to take pictures. I have some borrowed ones from my sister Kim (who is Boston marathon bound), and from my great running partner Shauna who also reached her goal of finishing her first marathon! Way to go girls!

BTW no pictures of David because he was off getting a massage when the camera's were out.

I think the best part of doing a marathon, or any competition is doing it with other people who you can share your pain, and your joy with! That is what makes it all worth it for me! Thanks peeps! You're the best!

Homecoming Week

So it has been a wild and crazy week around here... Sad to see it end. Every day was a dress up day at the high school. On Thursday all of the classes have field day. Freshman compete against Sophomores. Juniors against Seniors. Derek's class won handily (the sophomores) The Seniors only won by 1 point. They also won their homecoming game last night. Today they didn't have school, so the dance was tonight. I rather like having it on a Friday night, they have all of tomorrow to recuperate, and it isn't Sunday. Derek went to the dance with a group of his friends, and Mikaela asked a guy from a different school. Here are some pictures of them through the week.

Kamryn and Anna begin their off-track 3 weeks today. Didn't they just go back to school??? Another reason I am hoping our track system will soon disappear.

Time to go and chaperone the high school dance. Can't wait.... it isn't a fun place to be.