Marisa is 6!

My baby girl is 6! Wow. Here is the beaming girl on the day of her bday (02/03/04). Great birthdate!
For her party I planned a mom's nightmare, and a child's dream - a candy party. I had a couple games (lollipop toss, candy bingo, and Pin the candy on the candyland game board ...) but the main event was the CANDY BUFFET. This was their "goody bag". They each got a bag that they had decorated, and were able to take 1 candy (or 2 or 3 depending on the sign on the container) from each candy dish. No candy was consumed at the party - I sent it all home. I'm no dummy.

Here they are going through the line ...

And the last few years I have had fun baking and decorating cakes for my kids' birthdays. THis year I did two (because there were 19 little girls and Lucas and a lot of moms and I was afraid there wouldn't be enough - but the real reason was I was just having fun decorating cakes and I couldn't decide which one to make!) The first was a Bubblegum machine cake.

And the 2nd was a Candyland cake. This one was fun to decorate as a family. (And I wouldn't be able to do this without my husband's help for sure! He's the real decorator.)

And the cake at the end. In this picture I'm saying "Is it over yet? Can someone please get these children out of my house?"

Visitors

Sunday morning we looked out in our yard and saw some visitors. Peacocks! Lots of them. There were about 15 I think. They live a couple blocks from us and come visit every once in awhile, but we'd never had this many at once. This one was the prettiest, but he never did show us his feathers. Oh well.



They even enjoyed the playground in the backyard. :-)

Coming up the stairs ...

Marisa is trying to feed them. We made the mistake of giving them some food and when we came home from church they were still here, along with lots of poop all over the sidewalk and patio! I wanted to send M and L outside to play but wasn't sure how mean or gentle they are ... so Victor got out the water hose to wash off the sidewalk ... and shoo them away. Enough excitement for one day. Now back to having clean sidewalks free of peacock feathers and other things ...