The Hazard Chronicles

It was the first week of Spring and I am loving it! I didn't get this post up yesterday because we were busy walking to the park and having a BBQ picnic- I'd say it was worth it! Let the season of fun begin!

This week was our Evelyn week. We FINALLY decided to celebrate her birthday (2-19) with a party for her and her friends. We had one planned for the actual week of her birthday, but then Maren was born, and then my parents were here, and then Rachel's mom was here.... Well, the big day finally came, and what a day it was!

Rachel went all out for this. The theme was farytales, and she had it all figured out, from the decorations to the games to the cake. Evelyn had five of her good friends over and they started out by making crowns which were labled with their fairytale name (Sir Jack, Lady Evelyn, etc.) This was a huge improvement over silly party hats and helped to set the stage for everything else. It was a good party and everybody had fun.

One of the funny/tragic moments of the party happened with the pinata. After the kids poked around for a while it became obvious that we were going to be there all day if things continued as they were. That's when I stepped up to bat. Well, I must have overestimated the strength of our little pinata (as well as the kids hitting it), because one good solid wack totally obliterated it. Like, seriously, there was nothing left of that poor pinata. Also, the blow was hard enough that it split open most of the boxes of Nerds candies that were inside of it, so when it broke there was a litteral explosion of Nerds. It was cool. The kids went running and started picking up candy like their lives depended on it (there were other things besides Nerds).

Except for Jack. Jack wanted the Nerds. So he found a Nerds box and slowly started picking the little candies off the floor, one by one. It took him a while, but finally he had filled up most of his box. He was obvioiusly very proud of his accomplishment and very happy to have a whole box of Nerds to himself. He ran over to Rachel to show her, saying "Look, look." Just when Rachel looked, however, tragedy struck. The bottom fell out of the box and all the candies went rolling accross the floor. He was crestfallen...but only for a minute. Thankfully, Jackson is only 2 and has a short attention span. Rachel acted quickly by pointing out some Hershey's Kisses for him to go after. I think the Nerds were totally forgotten by the time he was about half way to the Kisses. We swept up the Nerds, and everyone was happy.

...Including a very chocolate-covered Jackson.

Another funny moment during the party was during the game "pin the fire on the dragon." (Obviously a spin-off of the donkey game, but more fairy-tailish). Well, when it was Evelyn's turn, she removed her blindfold only to see that she had put the fire right on top of the dragon's head. She suddenly became very distressed and started saying "Get it off! Get it off! It is going to burn the nice dragon!" Rachel and I were too busy laughing to do much about the unfortunate dragon, so Evelyn decided to take action and remove the offending flame herself. Whew! Disaster averted...barely.

After all of Evelyn's friends went home we hurried and cleaned everything up and got ready for the next party that we were to have... that night! We had invited some friends and a couple of Japanese exchange students over for a BBQ and camp-fire in our back yard. This was also a lot of fun and I think everyone had a good time. We did steaks on the grill and roasted hot dogs and s'mores over the fire. One of the big highlights was the makeshift shooting range I had set up in the shop for use with my air pistols. I know- it sound a little adolescent. Well- we had teenagers there, as well as Japanese students who had never been allowed to even touch anything resembling a real weapon (by law), and it became the feature of the night. After it got dark we sat around the fire for a long time until they had to go. It was a success, and I think it was only the first of many, many backyard gatherings we will have this summer.

Here's Evelyn, ready for the big event!

Evelyn and Rachel spent a long time getting ready for this party. Here, Evelyn proudly displays the ill-fated pinata that she decorated.

Our house was filled with royalty.

The cake. Evelyn and Rachel had fun decorating this. I think it was very impressive.

Rachel made little booklets of "The Paper Bag Princess" to include with each of the kid's party-favor bags.

Lady Evelyn

Lady Adalie.

Me and Maren, before we whacked the snot out of Evelyn's pinata.

The back-yard campfire party.