Party!

Even though Anna's actual birthday was several weeks ago. We finally had her party yesterday. It was a beautiful day, so I'm glad we waited. She wanted to have an outdoor party this year (which is always iffy in the springtime). It was held at a local park. Anna wanted to have a hula hoop party.

Friday night we were cutting sprinkler tubing and making circles with connectors. We made eight. Anna and I had picked out some colorful duct tape for decorating the hoops (you can get it at Michael's). Below, Anna's friend, Jesse, is getting started.

When the hoops were all decorated, we had some hoop contests. One was to see who could hula hoop the longest. Since we could have been there all day with that one, we had to make it harder by having the person spin their body while hooping and then stopping and reversing the body spin. Eventually we had a winner. There was also a contest to see who could do the most hoops. The funniest was a team relay race to walk and hoop down to a tree and back.

Below is everyone with their decorated hoops. Only one person did not show up, so Frank decorated that hoop.

Anna decided she wanted to have cupcakes instead of cake. She also wanted to try out some food coloring spray that we saw at JoAnn's. Here's how they turned out. Note: The spray is a bit messy and would be better on a flat surface, like a sheet cake, if you are doing a stencil.

On Friday at school, they had class pictures taken. Anna wanted me to curl her hair that morning. My curling iron, that comes out once every 5-10 years, is still functional. We curled her hair. But the one thing of hairspray I had didn't work, because it rarely gets used as well (we are pretty much wash-and-wear people here). I warned Anna that her hair might not stay curled until they took the pictures. By the time we walked to school, most of the curl was gone. She was quite disappointed.

I told her we could curl her hair for her party day and take a picture right away. That morning she washed her hair. I put some mousse in it and blow-dried it. Then I curled it, which took quite a while. I remembered Grandma had left some hairspray downstairs and got that to put on (she didn't like the smell, which was unscented. Neither did I, which is why I don't use the stuff.) Below are a couple of the pictures we took, in the same place as a few weeks ago. Now the tree is in bloom and her curls lasted a bit longer.

This first picture is the one Anna likes best, probably because her curly hair is in her face.

This is the one I like the best. I remembered after the first picture to turn the flash on my camera. (If you are taking pictures outside in the shade, it really helps to have your flash on.) I pushed her hair back behind her ear, because I wanted to see all of the beautiful face! Sounds like a mother, doesn't it?