Feb. 13: Post-party

Whew. Katie’s birthday celebrations are done for another year. Last night was her slumber party, the planning of which started giving me headaches late in the week. With my mom’s help, though, it went just fine.

Mom and I spent most of Friday morning grocery shopping and party-prepping. Katie had made all the decisions about food to be served—dinner was spaghetti with non-chunky sauce, dessert was birthday cake, movie snacks were popcorn, red licorice and M&Ms—so we pretty much just followed her list. Mom and I picked up some extra goodies too, mostly because those big cinnamon gummy hearts were irresistible and Mom and I love cinnamon candy and as the hostesses we deserved a little somethin’ too, right?

Katie had also given me a list of songs she wanted on her party playlist, and I spent way too many hours tracking down crappy music and burning it onto CDs for each of the girls to take home. Here are her choices:

1. Party in the USA—Miley Cyrus
2. Fireflies—Owl City
3. Lovebug—Jonas Brothers
4. If I Didn’t Have You—Mitchel Musso & Emily Osment
5. Don’t Stop Believin’—Journey
6. I Wanna Be Rich—Calloway
7. The Boys Are Back—High School Musical 3
8. Let’s Do This—Miley Cyrus
9. Eye of the Tiger—Survivor
10. Naturally—Selena Gomez
11. Let’s Make This Last 4Ever—Mitchel Musso
12. Fly With Me—Jonas Brothers
13. Falling Down—Selena Gomez
14. Hey—Mitchel Musso
15. The Sweet Escape—Gwen Stefani
16. On the Line—Demi Lovato, featuring The Jonas Brothers
17. Welcome to Hollywood—Mitchel Musso
18. Viva La Vida—Coldplay

You can probably guess how much my ears bled while listening to this playlist at least four times through.  There were just a handful of tunes that didn’t hurt to hear. (Psst… I kinda sorta really really love Fireflies.)

I assembled the take-home goodie bags, which were filled with lots of girly things that hopefully weren’t so junky that they went straight into the garbage at home. Katie actually wasn’t much help with ideas for what should go in the goodie bags, but she liked everything Mom and I came up with. I have a love-hate relationship with goodie bags. Is it possible that I could be done with them now? I sure hope so.

Katie chose Imagine That as the movie for them to watch.

Erika came home from school with Katie, so the party started early for the two of them. We kicked out Victor and Jack, and Sophie and Phoebe arrived around 6. After dinner, the four girls ran around the house, made a couple phone calls, played with the dogs, changed into jammies, and finally settled in to watch the movie. It was all quite civilized. Darlene stopped by, and she and my mom sat in the living room and chatted while I watched the Olympics upstairs. The girls were great—very well-behaved and never wake-up-the-neighborhood noisy. I got up around 2:30 and heard at least a couple of them still talking. I’m pretty sure one was Katie—she’s our late-nighter. She’s also a little grouchy this evening.

Katie, Sophie, Erika (trying to get the dogs in the photo) and Phoebe

Posing with Gilly

The partyin’ girls 

Scout, one of the hairy partyin’ girls, making herself comfy on Phoebe’s blanket

 

I’m glad to say that everyone who was alive when the party started is still alive right now. It all went very well, and the girls are welcome back to our house any time. Most importantly, Katie made a wonderful memory of her tenth birthday celebration. And HOORAY—Mommy survived!