Tiara 2's 7th Birthday : The UN-sleepover party....

So Tiara 2 is now 7. Sigh. I'm amazed by her everyday and I cannot believe she has been with us for 7 years now. She has grown into such a kind, sweet, compassionate and genuinely lovely person and her soul is just as beautiful.



All of Tiara 2's little friends LOVE the idea of sleeping over yet none are quite to that point of making it through the night without wanting to be in their own bed. As much as they WANT to stay all night. It just isn't going to happen. Yet. So when Tiara 2 told me she wanted a sleepover party for her birthday, I immediately began stressing! I knew the little girls would want to come but wondered if any would make it through the night or worse yet, back out at the last minute and not make the party at all? Tiara 2 and I talked and decided to put a twist on the sleepover party theme.

We decided to do an UN-sleepover party. So we made our trip to the craft store to buy our birthday invitation supplies. I started making the Tiaras invitations when they were babies and the invitations have become as much fun as the party for the Tiaras. This year, we went with the PINK and PURPLE theme since only girls were on the invite list. So we purchased cotton candy pink and light grape purple felt, lavender puffy teddy bear ribbon and some yummy pale pink paper with girly-girl pink swirls. We made sleeping bag invitations for the little girls. (There is an invitation for Tiara 1 and Tiara 2 as well. I usually mail one to each of them for the Tiaras' birthday parties. By doing that, the Tiara who's having the party will have an invitation years from now as a memory of her party and the Tiara who is the sister of the birthday girl will receive an invitation just as all other invited guests.)


We rolled the sleeping bags up, added their names to the outside and tied them with a strand of princess pearls. We then hand delivered our invitations to each of the five little girls on our invite list since these could not be mailed.


The day before the party, I made our chocolate "fried" eggs. They turned out very well and were a HUGE hit at the party! For the party, I sat them in a hot pink skillet which I borrowed from the Tiaras kitchen.


The day of the party, I made our cupcakes. We had fudge chocolate cupcakes with pink icing and golden vanilla cupcakes with lavender icing. I arranged them on our party table along with our fried eggs. Tiara 2 had her own pedestal for her cupcake.






We were serving breakfast at the party which included Belgian waffles so we had milk chocolate chips and white chocolate chips as well as whipped cream to garnish the Belgian waffles. Hot chocolate was also on the menu and the puffy pink heart marshmallows were available too.




We decorated with more girly princess pearl strands, purple streamers, hot pink and lavender curly ribbon, and balloons in cotton candy pink, grape purple and pearly white.



The girls were all dropped off at 5pm, wearing their pajamas and fuzzy slippers and toting their sleeping bags. They painted pillow cases.

Then they ate their breakfast of Belgian waffles and hot chocolate, both with lots of chocolate chips and whipped cream. After breakfast, they laid their sleeping bags out on the floor, the lights were dimmed and they watched Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler (which I HIGHLY recommend!).


They ate 3 bowls of popcorn during the movie and drank Capri Sun SUNRISE juice boxes.

After the movie was over, they had dance contests and burned all the sugar off.



We then had cupcakes and ice cream.


And as Tiara 2 was opening her gifts, the parents arrived to take their party girls home. The party seemed to be a HUGE hit and was a great alternative to driving little girls home at 2am when they couldn't sleep and missed their own beds.

Happy 7th birthday, Tiara 2......

Quietness, we are ready for you......

"If you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you- you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness." One of my favorite lines of one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors ever. The book? The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The author? C.S. Lewis. This book quickly became a favorite of mine at a very young age and I'm thrilled to say that it has also captured the hearts of both Tiaras. But this post isn't as much about the book as about the quote from the book...

"If you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you- you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness." All night for me would be 2009. Cried until you have no more tears left? Check. That was accomplished in 2009. The quietness in the end? 2010 for my family. 2010 is our quietness in the end. It has to be.

So, it's finally happened. Our FIRST First Lego League season has come to an end. Sigh. And my, oh my, how much we have learned this season!

Tiara 1 has been yearning to be a part of the FLL madness since she first saw a team practicing at the ripe old age of 5. FLL states that children as young as 6 can participate although they recommend FLL for ages 9 - 14. For those 15 and older, there are other Lego clubs requiring bigger robots and bigger wallets. So for the next few years, we are true FLL age.

I got a phone call in August from a friend who had joined a new FLL team that was forming. The new team was being coordinated by someone who coached a team last year but she was unwilling to coach this year due to time constraints. She was willing, however, to coordinate. By that, she was willing to ask someone to coach, ask someone to open their home and allow the use of her robot for the season (and the bot is quite costly). So, my friend had agreed to open her home but no one had agreed to volunteer as coach. The coordinator let my friend know that unless my friend would coach, there would be no team. So my friend called me..... and that's where it all began.

I agreed to co-coach the team. Tiara 1 was SO excited. Our team had some ups and downs about 6 weeks later and we lost 3 members (only had 6 to start with). We gained one new member and had a new team of 4. Began working on our robot and our project. Took a few very cool field trips. Learned a lot about programming a robot. Learned a WHOLE lot about team work and working through issues.

In Georgia, the season started with 277 FLL teams. After the first qualifier, 96 teams were left standing. And we were one of those teams. Little ole us. All first year kids. Three 9 year olds and one 11 year old. Little ole us. Still standing and standing very proudly, I might add. And standing proudly with our first place trophy that we won for TEAMWORK! Woo Hoo!

Today, we had 32 teams at our Super-Qualifier. 15 moved on to State which will be held at GA Tech in two weeks. The winner of state will represent the GA FLL'ers at World in April. World will be held at the GA dome for the last year before moving to St. Louis (I believe it's St. Louis). World is a HUGE event and we will be there to bask in all the energy and excitement. But only as spectators.

Today was bittersweet for us. We have been attending Lego meetings since August and they became our daily school work for about 6 weeks leading up to our first qualifer. After all, they included research, life skills and of course, science. Much of our other school work has been set aside for months now, waiting patiently to be dusted off and loved upon by Tiara 1 and Tiara 2. Although we didn't advance to State today, the Tiaras are quite excited to get back to their "regular" school work on Monday. Tiara 1 said she really misses her geography. And her math. Tiara 2 said she misses "all of it." We began discussing all that we needed to cover and all that we want to cover in the coming weeks. And Tiara 1, in a way that only Tiara 1 can do, broke that train of thought. She derailed that train of thought. Tiara 1 asked if she could volunteer as an assistant at GA tech for the FLL state meet. So our FLL season may not be quite over after all.

I'm back..........

So after a one year hiatus from blogging, I have a craving to resume this outlet of my wacky mind. I am torn at times as to how much I should actually blog and what I should actually keep to myself; after all, it's always possible that someone might actually read this. And then, if someone were to read this, they might have an insight into my deeper self that I prefer to keep hidden most of the time. I'm one of those people watchers. I sit back, take it all in and try to read a person well before I ever let them see any part of who I truly am. So spilling my guts on this keyboard is heavy on my mind.... just in case, someone might actually read this. Just sayin.

So it's been one hell of a year. The economy took it's toll on my family in more ways than any of my friends even know or realize. I have kept it all bottled up and hidden away (see what I mean). Too personal. But 2009 is h-i-s-t-o-r-y. It's definitely a year that I'm sure will appear in the US history books for many reasons in years to come as well as making it's appearance on the newest version of Trivial Pursuit. It's definitely not a year that I will ever forget although I would most gladly prefer to remove many parts of it from my already-full-to-capacity brain. It's now 2010 and I want this year to be a TEN! I have every intention of making it a TEN.

What to do, what to do?

So one of my New Years Resolutions is already exploding before my eyes. I had every intention of giving this blog the well-deserved and needed care it craves starting on January 1 but life has, again, gotten in the way. I spend a lot of time running through ideas in my head about what I can put on this blog. And occasionally I think of a good idea but don't get around to posting it and then.......I forget what it was that I had thought of. Brilliant, huh?

And then, I often read others' blogs and think, I could have written about that! And should have written about that! But can't write about that now since it's already been written about!
I have always enjoyed creative writing and been good at it (or so I was told) but since I've started my blog, I can't seem to think of anything to write about!

And I should probably have a contest to drum up a following but then, I need to have posts that are worth reading before attempting a contest. sigh. What to do?

Great Giveaway for your little Girly-Girls!

I just found an awesome giveaway over at Frugal Mommy of 2 Girls. Check it out!

So we started our new book club last week. The Magic Tree House book club ended in December since we are now officially caught up with Mary Pope-Osborne. And the kids asked that I start a new book club. The Magic Tree House book club was a great book club but it did limit us in regards to age. Our homeschool co-op, at one time, had a teen book club, a Newberry book club (for the tweens) and the MTH book club that I led. Although the MTH club had 15 members at one time, we gradually dwindled to 6 or 7 with 2 of those being mine.

So in starting the new book club, I really wanted one that would appeal to a larger age span and hopefully get the crowd back. The Newberry club has ended as the mom who leads it is moving to NY in a few months when her hubby returns from Iraq. And the teen club ended months ago although I don't know what happened with that.

After much research and a few kids who really begged, we decided to go with the Carole Marsh Mystery series. They are geared for ages 6-14 and really have a great appeal with the kids. The author actually lives within an hour of us in Peachtree City GA and there's a huge possibility we might get her to visit our bookclub one month.