La Vida Loca!

Catie's 8th birthday is next week, but we decided to celebrate it early before people get too busy with Christmas events. Only one girl and her family couldn't make it to the party, so I think the timing was right.

We started out the evening with a spaghetti and meatball dinner for Catie and her friends and their parents. It was a bit hectic, as there were a lot of us, so we ate in two shifts, feeding the kids first. While the parents ate the kids decorated gingerbread men (courtesy of Costco!) so we could eat in relative peace. The parents left around 9:30, and I got the kids to lie down on their sleeping bags in Catie's room, which lasted until about 10:30 pm, when Catie came to tell me that some of the girls were crying for their mommies. Oh dear. I figured everyone was way overtired, so I split them up into three bedrooms, and let the two die hards stay up and talk and laugh until the wee hours, while the rest of us went to sleep.

Miraculously they all slept until around 8 am, and then ate a french toast breakfast courtesy of Jim and Kevin in front of a blazing fire, courtesy of a fake log. It was actually colder inside the house, so the kids are now all outside in the front yard playing some kind of espionage game that involves guns and talking covertly into broken cellphones. I'm ready for them to go home so that I can go on a bike ride with Kev!