Day 185-February 12, 2011

Today Megan and I helped John and Eleanor celebrate their birthday with a carnival themed party. Eleanor asked that I come over early so I can braid her hair. Since I've been in Mobile she hasn't let me braid her hair bur recently she has allowed me to. This has resulted from a reminder that she allowed me to braid her hair when she was a "baby" in Washington DC. She informed me that since I did it when she was a baby, I can do it again now.

The party was with their friend, Twig. Twig lives a few houses away and has a trampoline. Twig is a year younger so there were tons of kids there and it seemed that each child invited to the party had at least 2 siblings they brought along. All the older siblings became the chaperones on the different carnival games. The kids would get tickets and then redeem the tickets for prizes on the tables. There was also a visit by the ice cream truck, where you could pick anything you want! This was little kid heaven.

It was funny to see that part of the preparation was a cooler of beers and pitchers of sangria. It was important the older siblings took control of the games because most parents were more interested in drinking and socializing than watching the kids. At one point a 5 year old child was told to "man up" when he got hurt on the trampoline. It's funny to see the "bro" mentality continue into parenting.

Advice: Never get a cotton candy machine. They are a huge mess and more cotton candy aka nasty sugar bits will be on you than on those silly sticks. Also cotton candy is gross! I found the above picture online because our cotton candy never looked anything like this as hard as we tried.

We had a girls night dinner and movie. Thanks mom for the gift card!