Tess is ten. To celebrate we had eight of her friends over for a slumber party. Here's all but one of them in the apple tree. It was an epic evening though not in the tradition of previous theme parties. This more about feeling the synergistic force of so many ten year old girls in a single small area over an extended period of time. It really is something to experience, perhaps not twice in a lifetime.
We attempted a maypole, emphasis on
attempted.
The girls then dressed in heels and whatever else they could find in the dress up box and walked in the drizzle to the nearby art center to see an exhibition of kids art about birds. It was a good reminder of how sometimes a walk in the rain stacks up well against just about any structured party game.
Back home again, Beth showed them a quirky method for decorating cupcakes that involved using a rolling pin on starburst candy and cutting large marshmellows among other things. Some of them even got eaten.
There was a double feature movie time which didn't begin till about nine. We saw
Tangled followed by
Ponyo. It was almost two in the morning when the final credits rolled. Some kids went to sleep, but not all.
The next morning bright and early we made french toast and sausage while the kids circled up on the floor and played telephone.
By ten thirty Saturday morning, everyone had packed up their things and left. In the suddenly still aftermath, with just my nuclear family around me on the curb of the street, I imagined that the need to exhale I was feeling right then might be something akin to how survivors of a hurricane feel.
Lots of fun, not much sleep, and, as I said earlier, not again (in the near future at least).
K
Before coming home from Walla Walla last Saturday we dropped by the animal shelter there. Here is who was waiting for us there. Can't tell you one fact about her parentage...she was abandoned and had been at the pound for a month. She's about four months old. Vet guesses she might hit 40 pounds full grown. Right now she has the body language of a lamb, kind of leggy and with a gamboling gait. Here we go.
