George turned 9 on Saturday. As always, I am shocked by how fast time passes, remember him as a tiny baby, yada yada yada --- but this year, all of that was overshadowed by his party: our first slumber party. He has been planning this for months, ever since he went to his friend's birthday sleepover. It would be a military party, they would sleep upstairs ... the details just kept coalescing.
I couldn't think of any reason to say no, so I said yes, but the whole prospect seemed daunting. We had never had any of his friends spend more than about four hours with us. What would it be like having them for 16? I hadn't realized that a group of kids would keep themselves busy quite easily. The whole party was more fun and less work than I had expected. Tiring, though! Next time we are going to have a "quiet down" time when they have to watch a movie or do something else calm rather than just rampaging around until midnight.
We weren't quite ready when the guests started arriving, but that was no problem and in fact meant that George's friends could help him decorate the cake:
D-day cake, finished -- note the man who has jumped over the side of the Higgins boat:
Here you can see more of the German defenses:
Turns out it's very easy to get frosting out of Legos (actually I knew this already) but if you jam a guy down into the cake, you will need a toothpick to get the cavities inside his legs clean.
Much of the afternoon was spent preparing for and then conducting an assault on a well-defended pillbox. Here are the troops in a lull before combat:
The enemy appears:
General George rolls away from the grenade:
Here they are tending to a wounded comrade:
Being wounded was apparently very appealing. I had laid in a supply of gauze bandages & pads which was exhausted in no time.
Eventually they captured the lone defender:
They were pretty bloodthirsty & most appeared never to have heard of the Geneva Convention.
This assault was so successful that they repeated it several times, until pizza was ready. The evening rolled on, and on, and on, with a regular alternation of war games, Lego building, and snacks. We finally told them they had to go to bed at midnight (too late); they were up again about 6:30 (too early).
We had two real casualties -- one boy cut his foot running around outside barefoot in the dark, and I managed to splash hot bacon grease on my foot. Fortunately I only got first degree burns; it could have been much, much worse. My Birks actually took the brunt of it, so only the part of my toes that were exposed got burned (left foot):
The front porch is covered in grease stains -- I was taking a pan of burning bacon outside so it wouldn't stink up the house -- but better the porch than me.
After the party guests left, we cleaned up and chilled out for a while, then opened family presents. George got some very detailed books about military planes from one set of grandparents:
and a magic set from the other:
We gave him a metal detector:
and are paying both him and Charlotte a nickel for every nail they find in the yard or gardens. I'm not surprised that they are turning up plenty despite my contractor's assurances that he had "taken care of that."
Charlotte's present was apparently hard to open:
but very cool:
And now it's time to go!
(Can you see the arrow striking Charlotte's shield?)
