Birthday pictures

Three years and 363 days ago, Hannah entered out lives. And so today we celebrated her with a superhero and princess birthday party at our house. A few of her boy and girl friends came over dressed as princesses or superheroes and played some games, ate some food, and generally had a good time.

Our littlest princess

As usual, Lynda was hyper-prepared for the event. Each attendee would get a custom-made cape (for superhero boys) or cloak (for princessy girls). The kids could make their own emblem to go on the back that was then hot-glued to their cape for play while they were at the party or once they got home.

Hannah's cape.

Lynda has also prepared some other games, such as "Pin the Mask on the Superhero" and "Pin the Crown on the Princess." But not many of the kids were warmed up enough and comfortable enough to play those games. I tried to get the ball rolling, and played a bit. And Sarah gave it a try as well. But it didn't really catch on.

Not to worry though, there were lots of other choices ready to go. We also played a bit of Freeze Dance. We started with some old traditional songs such as "B.I.N.G.O." and "The Farmer in the Dell." But the kids didn't really start dancing until Sarah dialed up "Pokerface" on her iPhone. 

(Kids today . . . )

The cupcakes on our cupcake tree were a nice decorative hit. And they tasted really good.
This was in lieu of a cake and it was a good idea.

There were other games and activities for the kids as well, such as a superhero or princess coloring page. A few of the kids enjoyed this as well, but mostly only for a few minutes. We had to keep throwing new things at them constantly to keep them interested. 

Grace worked throughout to keep the kids directed from one activity to the next. She loved it and was quite good at it. (One of the parents thought that Grace had a future as either a life coach or a television talk show host.)

Sarah, predictably, was the most interested in the coloring station.

In the front room, Grace had set up a maze/obstacle course for the kids to crawl through. It was an initial hit with the boys while the girls were coloring.

Despite all of the careful planning, however, when given freedom to do their own thing, the kids went up to Hannah's room and dragged out all of her toys, destroying the room in about two minutes flat. And when they were done with that . . .

. . . they headed down to the basement and played with things down there. It took a few more minutes to locate and spread all the toys across the floor down there, but soon it was all done. It was a mess, but they were all having a fun time playing with each other like they do at daycare. (And it gave the parents a chance to sit down upstairs and chat.)