Jossy turns 7!!!

I had this plan to only throw "friend" parties at ages 5, 8, 12, and 16.  But after Matty's flub of a family-only party this year, I changed my mind. I'm not sure what my plan is anymore.  But I let both Lacey and Jossy have parties on off years.  

When I first decided to throw her one, I told her she could invite 6-8 friends and we'd just play in the sprinklers or something. But as we made our list we realized so-and-so might find out and get her feelings hurt by not being invited (a feeling I am way too familiar with) so we just kept adding to it and it grew to like 16 invites or something.  I figured it was the first week of school being out and surely SOME of them would not be able to come . . . right???

Wrong.

1 kid didn't come.  That was it.  I ended up having 18 kids there including my own 4 and NO other adult to help out.  I had asked someone but she forgot about it and made other plans the day before.  Dan had a conference and couldn't get out of it to help me, so Matty was my saving grace.  I told him before things started, "Look, you are NOT a kid today!  You are an ADULT!  You have to think like a grown-up and help me out!"  He did awesome and filmed everything for me as well as helping with games, cake, etc.  He was a superstar for sure.  

Everyone had a good time, especially the birthday girl.  

And that's what this was all about anyway.  She deserves to be celebrated.  

The Highlight of Cub Scouts

You ask any boy what he loves most about scouts and I'm sure the Pinewood Derby will come up.

Matty and Dan researched like crazy this year how create a winning derby car.  Had they tested it out on the track even 30 minutes before things started, it would have gone better.  Matty ended up with 4th place that night overall, but did much better once they had tweaked a few things halfway through.  Matty had a great time though and took it all in stride.

I'm also pretty certain he would have done better if we hadn't been using what must have been the world's oldest pinewood derby race track.  Seriously, that thing was probably used by Adam!  Everyone knew if your car was in the far left lane, you had no chance of winning.  How messed up!

My Favorite Dancer

"NOOOOOOOO!!!  I don't WANT you to take the curlers out of my hair!!! Never ever!"

Roughly ten minutes (and some bribing) later . . .

Lacey loved every. single. second of being on stage and performing.  

Her smile was so genuinely happy.   

And yes, we totally left her ballet shoes at home.  (They are ALWAYS in the diaper bag . . . but of course that day they magically weren't.)  Thankfully, out of her thousand pairs of shoes she could wear as we left the house, she randomly had chosen some black shoes that were good enough to blend in.  Phew!