Adah Sees Stars for Her Birthday

On October 22 Adah turned nine.  Wow.  I have a nine-year-old.  She is a great big sister and surely sometimes bears the brunt of being the first child, hence the guinea pig on our labratory of parenting.  We're so happy she's in our family and were happy to celebrate with her.

We always start the day with presents!  Adah was super excited to get her own Mancala board.  The kids in her grade have really been into playing Mancala this year and she'd been asking if we could get the game.  I'd like to say that I got her this one, but it was actually a gift to her from my visiting teachers (women in the Church who visit me monthly to chat, share a spiritual thought, and see if they can help me in anyway).  They had no idea Adah liked the game; it was pure coincidence.

She was also eager to read Vet Tails, a book from her grandparents that's written by a veterinarian.  Adah wants to be a vet when she grows up.

Adah's birthday party this year had an astronimical theme.  My parents gave us their telescope in September, and Adah used it as a base for planning her entire party.  I wish I'd taken more photos of the cool decorations, but you can see them a little in the backgrounds of these other photos.  The black wall behind us (below) had a bunch of giant star and planet stickers on it, but we also used the little gold foil star stickers to create arrangements of real constellations that party-goers tried to find.

The birthday cake was a fun one to make.  The colorful Fruit-by-the-Foot edges were a stroke of genius on my part (if I do say so myself) since frosting the edges of a cake that has been cut can be really hard (lots of crumbs).  The photo doesn't show the yellow sparkles on top.

I thought the cake looked pretty cool before it was frosted.  When I realized that it would take two 9x13 cakes to get all the pieces, I decided to marble two cake recipes.  Cool, eh?

When everyone arrived Adah gave them masks decorated with stars and star bandanas.  Other party favors were Starbursts and Milky Way candybars.

We hung stars and balloons from the ceiling.  The balloons were meant to be planets.  See that one on the left? That's earth with the moon orbiting around it. Get it?  I also made a cool one that looked like Saturn.  Wish I had a photo of that!

 

Here's Damon manning the "alien head-knocking game," as Adah called it.  Everyone got three throws to try and knock over the alien heads on the back of the chair.  See? The name is apt, I suppose.

 

After games, cake, and presents, we sent the girls (there were about a dozen) outside to play with glow-in-the-dark bracelets.  Damon was able to find one sliver of sky that wasn't clouded over where everyone could catch occasional glimpses of Jupiter.  We were hoping for more stargazing time, but they all had a great time running and playing outside until their parents came. It was sure a fun way to celebrate.