Let the birthday partying begin!! Saturday night we began the first of 3 celebrations (because all birthdays seem to be stretched out - and who can blame a person, it's their birthday!!). This year SuperStar decided to have a Food Fight party. We had it all planned out - the food would easily blend back into the earth and all would be neat and tidy for BigGuy's next mowing. Then SuperStar began to heavily hint that she wanted a new bike for her big 9th bday. We looked at her biking around the neighborhood - all knees around her ears - and realized that her bike really was far too small. As adults we also thought about the cost of a bike and the durability. We wanted to buy a Good bike that would last awhile and our kids are biking a lot. This meant that her bike would be in the $100 range if we caught a good sale (because even we have the common sense not to think a professional bike is needed for a 9 year old - BigGuy wanted to check out the pro bike stores and we did - kids, I mean 5 year old size kid bikes were selling for $500!!! The average price of a kids bike there was around $350!! We love our kids, but that is like paying more then $35 for kids shoes - they outgrow them in 4 months.). We thought about the food fight cost for throw away food and 20 kids worth of food and take home treats. Then we talked to SuperStar. The bike was a big expense and we did want to give it to her, but she had to scale down her party to a few friends, less expense and we would throw in a sleepover. She thought about it for a few days and decided a Swimming Sleepover Party was the way to go. And that was that.

Everyone arrived - we treked them over to the pool - they swam, had pizza (it was freezing! The high here has been 78 -80 until today we reached 84) - then home for a Pinata in the Dark, some free time - rounded them all up and they painted picture frames and then deco'd them. Finally the evening ended with a giant screaming pillow fight (thank goodness they were in the basement), a Harry Potter movie, chips and drinks. Amazingly at 11:30pm I was asked to turn the movie off because they all wanted to go to sleep! And that was that. BigGuy stayed up late, but the house was quiet by Midnight. However, Babers had everyone back up by 6:30am - which was fine because most were picked up by 8:30am for their church masses.

Apparently the entire thing was a huge success! Next celebration - First Day of School Birthday where SuperStar gets to take cupcakes to school........