Happy Birthday, Rora Grace!

Last Wednesday my eldest daughter turned the ripe old age of eight years old.  It has been so fun and quite an honor as her mother to watch her the last six months as so many things started to 'click'.

Birthday Pie!

We decided to have a friend party on the Saturday, when all those that attend school could come, so for our family party she chose to have pie.  Pumpkin pie.  And she was happy.  The gifts from the grands were opened and loved, gifts from sisters played with, and gift from Mum & Dad delighted in.  This is the gift I hunted down:

She outgrew her 1/8-size violin awhile ago, but having the money for a new one proved very tricky.  I did, however, recently discover a great guy named Todd who sells violins out of the back of a church 30 minutes away, and only charges $65-$75 for the violin, bow and case.  That is where I got this beautiful violin (the picture can't do justice to the beauty of this instrument!) for the extra $10.  Hoorah!

Saturday's party was sort-of based around the American Girl dolls.  For invitations I found a fun picture online with with eight first dolls all listed with their dates and a caption above that said, "Choose your favorite American Girl".  Well, the challenge was on!  I added Aurora's picture on the side with the year of her birth (2004, the four matched the fours in the dates of all the dolls), and bigger than the other dolls.  If I have energy to put a picture on at some point, I will.  The info was at the bottom of the invitation.  Aurora handed these out to her favorite people, including our 25 year-old neighbor and two couples that are in their sixties and winter in Arizona.  The winter visitors were such sports to come; I made them quiche in appreciation. :-)

Aurora's favorite doll is Kirsten (it's the doll she owns), so I turned our Holly Hobbie cake pan into as close an approximation of Kirsten as I could.  (The yellow frosting is meant to be her braids....)

I decided to play a couple of games from America's past with the children who came.  We played one called "Corners" (there are four corners the children run to while "it" counts to ten with eyes closed, then calls out a number.  All children at that corner are out and must come to the center.  You play until there is one left...if you can get there within a few calls) and another one she requested called "How Many Miles to Babylon" (a variation of Crack the Whip with a dialogue-d rhyme at the beginning).  After those games, we had a relay race.  This is where it comes in handy to be the wife of a reenactor.  I hauled out our dresses and aprons and had the girls race by threes to put them on, then run back and tag another girl (or boy, we had one at that point), run back with them, undress while the next girl dressed, and then run over and build a log cabin out of lincoln logs.

Here are some of the kids with the dresses...












                 ...and building the log cabins!







The last project before having cake was to make a journal, since the best way to know about anyone from history is reading their journals.  These were my own invention and really easy.  I cut some white paper about 1/2" on two sides and then used card stock for the covers.  Take five pieces of paper and one cover, fold them all in half.  Center the white papers inside the cover paper and the Paper punch one hole in each end, through all the paper.  Take a piece of string (about 18" long) and thread the paper from the inside so you can tie it on the outside.  I tie in a square knot first, then put on a bow.  Last part is to decorate the cover however you choose.  One ended up looking like this:

Ending in cake and presents, then giving each girl a baggie and letting them raid the leftover Valentine's candy rounded out the party and each girl left happy.  And I don't have to be creative like that for another few months...the twins are old enough now to ask for a party all their own and haven't had one yet so I don't mind.  

A couple of things Rora got for her birthday are books about baptism.  That is our curriculum for the next two weeks: learning all about baptism, its covenants, and its meanings.  She's excited and eager to learn, which makes me excited to share with her all of my love and knowledge of the subject.  Yippee!