Party, party, play, sleep-over

An exhausting and busy weekend.

Saturday morning I took Atti and Elora to the 3rd birthday party of a girl from child care. It was a nice affair - the mother was totally stressed out by it (I can completely sympathise!) but everything went splendidly. A good handful of kids who knew each other, lots of sunshine and excellent food.

She did a great job with the party games. The kids loved them.

The first: Treasure Hunt.

She had some gold coin chocolates and showed an example to the kids. "There are these treasures hidden in the garden. When you find them, come and put them in my basket."

That was it. No competition to get the most. Just fun finding the treasure. The cunning part was that she kept walking around redistributing the "found" treasures so that everyone could have a go at finding them and they weren't put in too difficult places. It was incredibly successful for a bunch of 3 year olds! And at the end she divided the coins up evenly amongst the kids so that no-one missed out.

The second game: Pinata.

Just a bought pinata that all the kids had a go at bashing. Nothing too strenuous or complicated. The best bit about this was that it was actually a "string-pull" pinata so (once she worked this part out with some advice form moi) once all the kids had had a good go with the stick, she simply pulled the string and let them scramble for the goodies. Excellent stuff!

The chocolate truffle birthday cake was gorgeous. Elora made sure she ate her share. Atti was too busy picking out the pinata lollies that had been trampled into the grass (ack!).

But, we eventually made it home and managed to get Atti down for his nap. Elora fell asleep in the car and then woke up when I tried to put her in bed (typical!). The rest of us tried to have a quiet afternoon and I finally got her to bed at about 3:30pm... and then had to WAKE her so we could go to our next party!

Dan's sister's 30th "B" party (B for Bec).

Dante went as "Ben 10", Dan went as a buccaneer, I went as "a Billy Bragg fan". About as much costuming as we could muster. Elora had her ballerina skirt and Atti wanted to go as Spiderman (or "Bider-man" as Dante insisted we call him) except that he refused to wear his costume when it came to it.

We had a lovely time. Grandma was there and another boy dressed as Ben 10 (son of some of Bec's friends). Lots of littlies, too. The kids had a ball. Elora almost demolished all of the cucumbers from the snack plate before graduating to the fruit platter (blood oranges, mandarins, kiwi...). It took two of our friends (Anna and "Red" Bec) to hold down Atti and put his shoes on when it came time to leave. He was Mr. Hyper.

And it was a very late night for us. The kids were not in bed before 10pm. Yikes! Not so good because the next morning we picked up Dante's school friend Luke who came over for a play and a sleep-over last night.

He's the middle child with an eleven year old brother and five year old sister. He can sometimes play a bit rough but his manners are exemplary, he eats anything and is generally a mild-mannered, patient boy. I was truly impressed at the way he was able to handle Dante's bossiness and outbursts. Even more impressive was the way he made sure that my niece Jasmine (who was over with her three sisters while her parents went cycling) was included in most, if not all, of the play. The general noise coming from the lounge room or wherever they were was full of cackling laughter and excitement with only the occasional argument. It was lovely to listen to!

This morning we dropped Luke off at home on the way to work. I have to say, it was a relief to get into my office this morning and sit down for a while!