The Wedding Weekend.

Faith's birthday party was the Friday before Joel and Lesley got married.  We had a party at our house with 14.5 guests.  It was funny.  Bill told us that 20 people were WAY too many to invite because if you applied the 2/3 rule, then we would have 14.5 guests here.  We laughed and mused about the poor half-child that would arrive.  She had 14 kids come and then one came half-way through.  Trust Bill to be right!

She said it was a fun party and the kids seemed to have a pretty good time.  If noise level and fun rating are directly proportional, then it was pretty much the best party ever.  It was a Lucky 13 party so we had a Lucky Charms eating contest (and made pancakes for those that wanted to eat, but didn't want to participate in the contest).  Faith's good friend, Reese won.  (He's the one that everyone thinks she has a crush on, but doesn't...)  Brady, who Faith walks with after school had a good showing and Jake tried hard, but just as he had warned us, most of his food ended up in his lap and on the floor.  Funny kids.

We played a spin the bottle game where when it landed on you, you picked a piece of paper out of the bowl and had to do what it said on it.  It was full of things that would give you bad luck and rated with how many years of bad luck you would get for doing them.  Spencer had no problem whatsoever itching the inside of his nose in front of everyone for 4 years of bad luck.  Unfortunately, it wasn't enough bad luck to win the game for him.  Reese won this game too...not helping us to quell the rumors circulating about Faith liking him.  He either has really good luck or really bad luck, we're not sure.

That game devolved into an arm wrestling match, which we just kind of went along with until Aubrey (our darling next-door neighbor) clued me in that the girls were bored, "What are we doing next?"  So next we played MASH and determined everyone's fortune.  I warned everyone beforehand that Ivy and Will would be the judges of who would win, so they better come up with some good answers on their MASH pages.  Will chose Timmy as the boy winner - he was going to drive a time machine and had a hilarious job too (can't remember what!)  Ivy chose Cree as the winner for the girls - she was going to marry the teacher of defense against the dark arts, but I thought that Alexis should have won because she was going to be a fairy and her husband was going to be Superman.  The funniest part about this game was that the boys came up with the most hilarious answers.  One of them was going to be an entrepreneur and his wife was going to be a pancake thrower.

Those were the highlights.  Faith got a bunch of gift cards and gave out real horseshoes as party favors so that everyone could go home lucky.

The day after Joel got married, was Faith's actual birthday.  Kaden and Kaia helped me make some posters for her and we stapled them to trees where we meet after school.  We also decorated the sidewalk along the path she takes with sidewalk chalk.  She said she really liked it especially because she happened to be walking alone that day (which is quite rare.)

 

 We were all especially happy that Joel and Lesley had tire issues because it meant that Kaden and Kaia were able to be with us long enough to see my kids after school and see Faith's reaction to all of their awesome artwork.

I had a blast with Kaden and Kaia.  For FHE on Monday night (we promised Bill record breaking speed, because he had to work) we had a quick lesson and then Kaden, Kaia, Faith, and Will all jumped in the pool for the activity.  They were out of the pool even quicker than they had jumped in.  It was so cold!  Bill even had to come see the fun.  I loved it that Kaden chose an activity that Bill couldn't resist seeing.

On Tuesday, Kaden and Kaia helped me with lunch bunch (and Ivy's friends adored every minute with them!)  We had a fun lunch trying out our awesome Amish peanut butter in different ways.  Kaden and Kaia both thought that the very best way to eat it was with Nutella and marshmallows.

It wasn't quite enough chocolate, though, so we then went to Ethel M's.  We went on the tour, mused about buying expensive chocolate and wandered around the gardens and told stories about plants that have made us sick.  You really need to ask Kaden about eating yarro.  He has a great story.

 

My only complaint about having Kaden and Kaia is that I don't know if I'll ever get to do that again.  I loved every minute of it.  Kaden is so easy to talk to and shared some of the music with me that he is into.  Kaia is such a love and she is wonderful with sidewalk chalk, so the timing was perfect!