I have to give a little shout out to my mom.
She is a genius.
When I was little and could only have big birthday parties every 4 years, I hated it.
I thought she was mean.
I couldn't understand it.
Now that I am a mom, I TOTALLY understand and I will say it again.
Pure genius.
Do you know how expensive birthday parties are?
Very, and if I had to do one every year for all 4 of my kiddos, we would be broke.
More broke then we already are considering how much $$$ goes to extracurricular activities.
But that's a blog post for another day....
With Emma turning 12 this year, it was time for a big birthday bash.
And what a party it was.
One of Emma's favorite movies is Clue. She loves the game too, so we were trying to decide how to incorporate it into a birthday party.
Then I remembered a murder mystery dinner party we had with Mark's family a few years back.
It was so much fun and I knew that Emma's friends would love to do something like that. So we found one online that was similar to the Clue game storyline and away we went.
With each invitation, we included a character card so that the guest would know which character they were and what they should wear to the party. I was so impressed with the costumes that these kiddos came up with. They nailed it.
Josh- AKA Gerrard the Butler- welcomed the guests as they arrived. He handed them their clipboards full of all the information they would need to solve the mystery of who killed Dr. Ogden.
A big THANK YOU to Grandma Great who let us invade your house so we could have dinner in a proper dining room.
I was worried that maybe the kids wouldn't understand the game or that they would be bored.
Boy, was I wrong.
They LOVED it and it was so fun to watch them get involved in the game and use their imaginations.
We had three rounds of clues and three courses of dinner
Appetizers- cheese and strawberries
Dinner- pizza and sparkling apple cider (with fancy plates and cups and everything)
Dessert- Molten Chocolate Lava Cake
Emma's friends were so generous in their gift giving too.
They know that she LOVES elephants and so there were a lot of cute elephant gifts.
We also had a little photo booth area with props.
Here is my favorite photo booth shot of the night...
Ellie's face kills me. The funny part is, I was playing around with settings on my camera and so I took about 3 shots and each time she had that same expression on her face. Hil-ar-ious.
The party went off without a hitch...unless you want to include the time that we almost burned Grandma Great's house to the ground.
Note to self... maybe when trying to keep the pizzas warm, you should make sure that none of the pizza boxes are touching the oven's element.
Grandma: "Des, did you light candles or something?"
Me: "No I didn't" (as I am looking past her at smoke billowing up from her oven)
I ran to the oven and yanked the door open to discover flames.
Thank you to Brady's mom, Leslie, who was there to calmly take the pizza box out of the kitchen and outside to extinguish the flames.
One pizza down.
Here's the really funny part.
About 20 minutes later I glance outside and notice that the pizza box has once again burst into flames thanks to the gentle breeze that was blowing.
Mark suggested that we probably should eat the rest of the pizza's before they all spontaneously combusted as well.
It makes for a great story anyway. Definitely a night to remember.
We ended the party by watching Clue and the kids playing some night games.
I am now completely exhausted, but do not have a moment of rest until school gets out.
I have 3 more weeks of preschool in which I need to use every spare moment I have to put my preschool kiddos scrapbooks together. I can't believe I have procrastinated this long. So if you need me in the next 3 weeks, I will be cozied up to my computer, when I am not shuttling kids around that is.
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