A Fancy Tea Party for a Fancy Five Year Old

Evie turned 5 at the end of March!  Can it be???  She's maturing and it's showing and I'm sad about it.

The thing with Evie is that she hasn't really found "her thing" when it comes to characters, shows, activities...she is the 3rd child and absorbs what everyone else does and likes...she rolls with it or else she'll be left out from the older ones...she's ok with everything.  That's a good thing, but it's also a not-so-good thing because when you ask her exactly what kind of birthday party she wants, she wants it all.  She wants a gymnastics party like last year...she wants a Pump It Up party like Eli had...she wants to roll in a giant inflatable hamster ball like Elina's school fundraiser had...she wants to dress up....she wants to incorporate an Easter egg hunt.  It's just a conglomerate of everything she's seen--but not one specific thing she loves and absolutely has to have.  We discussed the party for a few weeks and she finally decided she wanted a dress-up tea party at home with her friends.  She wanted everyone to dress up and she wanted to play a game and she wanted to end with a dance party in the bonus room.  Done!

I was excited about the tea party idea since we had thrown a fairy tea party for Elina when she turned 4.  She invited 6 of her closest friends and they all came dressed up in beautiful dresses.  We actually had 3 Elsas attend the party!  (Needless to say, after the party, Evie wanted her own Elsa dress!)

Here's what the party had--

BUTLERS
Eli and B dressed in their fancy-wear and served the girls at the tea party.  Well, B did most of the serving...Eli was MIA for a little while and then he decided to help himself to a cupcake.  Not super helpful, but he gets points for being super cute. B, too!

EASY DECORATIONS
We made a beautiful, easy backdrop using 3 plastic tablecloths.  We cut the tablecloth into strips and then braided the top part a little so that the colors would fan out more.  It actually came out nicely!

I also made a doily banner (because doilies make everything look fancy) by stringing doilies together and using my new Silhouette Portrait cutter that B got me for Christmas.  This thing is really amazing.  It can cut out any font that you have and it can cut lots of different shapes.  Now I understand why it is such a pricey item...because you don't need to buy a lot of cutouts anymore!

Then of course we used lots of pretty flowers and tiered stands and cake stands to make everything fancy-looking.  J did a great job at staging it all!

FOOD
We had lots of fancy food for the girls--little PBJ sandwiches,

marshmallows decorated with pink sugars,

pink sugar wafers dipped in almond bark and decorated with fun sprinkles,

little "macarons" (melted white chocolate sandwiched between 2 Cookie Crisp cereals!),

watermelon and blueberries inside a watermelon cut into the shape of a tea pot,

and fancy cupcakes (Jewish pound cake with buttercream).

ACTIVITIES

As each girl arrived, Evie put pearl necklaces around their necks.  Then they all decorated tea party hats with fake flowers, little butterflies, and gems.  The girls placed the items and a few adults hot glued them onto the hats.  In retrospect, the gems were a terrible idea.  Definitely took too long to glue those on!  And of course, Evie had to make a whole row of them!!

Then the girls made their own fancy necklaces with candy beads, Fruity Cheerios, and cookie charms (flower shaped cookies that I decorated with royal icing).  The girls worked hard on this...it was so quiet!  It was fun to watch the different ways each girl approached this activity.  Evie strung rainbow patterns.  Another girl did a rainbow, but she put all of the different shades of red together first...then all of the orange shades, etc.  Another girl made her own patterns--red and yellow, red and yellow, red and yellow...then green and orange, green and orange, green and orange...and so on.  They all came out beautifully!

GAME
Then we needed to switch the table decorations from a craft table to a tea party table.  So we had the girls sit on the floor to play Pass the Teacup while a few adults reset the table.  We played princess music and Eli would randomly pause the music and whoever was holding the teacup would be out.  To make it less sad, we told them that if they were "out" then they could come over and pick a prize first.  Evie's excited face during this game was priceless.  Truly priceless.  She told us that this was by far her favorite activity during the entire party!  Wow!  In the end, Evie came in 2nd but it really didn't matter because she had so much fun!  She said that it was difficult to pass the teacup with her big poofy dress on...it was really slippery.  Ha!

TEA PARTY
I told the girls about manners and I told them what "teas" they could choose from--chocolate milk, fruit punch, and apple juice.  Let me just tell you now that if you're thinking about doing a tea party for your little ones, just skip the apple juice.  NO ONE picked it!  Save your juice.  Everyone loved sipping tea from their fancy tea cups!  We actually purchased all the teacups and saucers at Goodwill the week before.  It was lots of fun mixing and matching things.  And now we have lots of items the kids can use for their own tea parties...and I won't be sad if they break.

Evie is being so dainty and proper...

...now look at our girl trying to get the very last drop of fruit punch out!

CAKE
Then we did the cake.  I had a half bundt for Evie to blow the candles out on.  It was also the cake I used to serve the adults.

Then each girl got a cupcake that they could decorate with all kinds of fancy sprinkles and edible pearls.  Evie ALWAYS wants me to buy fancy sprinkles and I don't because I have tons of leftover ones from other occasions, so I figured I'd let her go crazy for her birthday!  She thought it was the most awesome thing to put as much as she wanted of anything on top of her cupcake.  The end result was so pretty!  But then she took one bite, took off all the pink pearls, took a second bite and she was done!  She didn't want to eat it anymore!  It was just too much junk on there!

Here's our dainty girl again...

GIFTS
Evie received lots of wonderful gifts at the party...but the biggest winner were Barbie dolls!  We have lived without Barbies for quite a while now, so this is all new to us.  Previously, I had asked Evie what she truly wanted to see when she ripped open the wrapping paper on her gifts and she enthusiastically yelled out, "BARBIES! LOTS OF BARBIES!"  I was taken aback, but I was also glad she knew exactly what she wanted for once!  I only mentioned Barbies to my sister J...and after her birthday she had 7 Barbie dolls and 2 Frozen Barbie-like dolls!  I was shocked, but Evie was thrilled.

DANCE PARTY
Evie wanted to end her party with a dance/karaoke party in the bonus room so we all went up there and Evie started us all off by singing "Burn' while the other girls danced all around the room.  Then the other girls took turns singing Frozen songs, while everyone else danced around.  It was very entertaining!

It was a really fun party and the time just flew right by.  The girls were all so well-behaved and most of them were on task during the whole party.  Plus, my family was in town to help.  It all went so smoothly.  What a great way to celebrate Evie's 5th birthday!  (We still celebrated Evie's birthday for days after this...but I'll post more on that later.)
Here is our classy 5 year old again...

And here she is being anything but classy while playing Wii...

Gotta love this girl!!

Spring Break 2015

For Spring Break this year we kept it pretty low-key and went down to Mcallen to visit (my sis and her fam) Aunt A, Uncle K, and Cousin A.  We left on Sunday night and came back Thursday evening.  I actually drove the 4 kids down by myself both ways and survived!  B couldn't take days off so I was on my own.  It wasn't as bad as I thought I had imagined.  I mean, we did have a good 30 minute crying/screaming fit from Eulee on the way back.  But other than that, the older kids were super helpful and it was pretty uneventful (which is a good thing).

Every day we just slept in and had lazy mornings.  We wouldn't even leave the house to do something until 11am or so.  When I'm in vacation mode, I just can't get myself moving quickly enough.  It's so great to not be in "go-go-go" mode.

We didn't get very nice, Spring Break-y weather, so we had to do things inside most of the week.  When we had sporadic, rain-free weather, we went to hang out at the playground by Aunt A's house.  One of the days we went to Main Event for the first time.  The kids had a great time!

Another day we went to the International Museum of Art and Science.  I was really impressed with this place!  It had lots of interactive areas for kids as well as fine art and a huge playscape in the back.  The visiting exhibit they had was amazing.  A Korean artist named Ran Hwang had pieces of work up that used pins, buttons, and threads to make pictures.  She had huge birds and spiders everywhere.  We all loved this exhibit so much!  So impressive.  B says it looks like it took too much time.  Ha!  He's a true art afficcionado.

Then we also spent a day in Brownsville visiting the children's museum and then celebrating Ah-Ma's birthday.

The whole visit was really relaxing.  I had to share a bed with Eulee so my sleep was really off and I woke up really late on some days. Thank goodness Aunt A's baby still wakes up early so she could feed my other kids!  We also had movie nights.  Then I would stay up late watching "Shark Tank" with Aunt A at night.  Fun stuff!

The only negative thing about this whole trip was that Eli started cold symptoms on Wednesday night.  He was so congested he had bad ear pain.  Poor boy.  This all led to a series of unfortunate events....

Once we got home he had a bad cough on top of the congestion.  Then Evie caught the cold by Saturday.  This forced us to spend the end of our Spring Break at home.  It was unfortunate, but my little homebodies secretly enjoyed it!

Then Eli was all better and Elina caught the cold Sunday night.  So she stayed home on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.

By Tuesday, Evie was diagnosed with pneumonia!  Seriously??  So we were trapped at home all week.  Then when it seemed to all be passing, Eulee got pneumonia that Friday.  OMG!!  So we were all trapped again.

With all the illnesses we even did a shabby job on the biggest Pi Day of our lifetime.  We made pizza pies and ate sweet pies, but didn't celebrate with anyone.

Although Elina showed off some skills by memorizing almost 50 digits of pi.  Definitely takes after her dad.  Next year she'll give us a run for our money!
Now everyone seems to be on the mend.  But it was a long 2 weeks.  I'm hoping this is all over.  It was such a fun Spring Break, but the ending was not so fun.

All About Eli

The last Saturday of February was pretty much an ELI DAY.  First we all woke up early for Eli’s last basketball game at 8:30am.  It was a fun game and Eli made a basket so it was all very exciting!

Then we went straight to Eli’s karate belt graduation.  All the kids who are moving up to the same belt color usually perform their forms and self-defense together in front of all the parents.  But since Eli was the only one to move up to green this time, he got to perform all by himself!  I had no idea and had tears in my eyes watching him!  We were so proud of him!

Here he is doing combinations--

Here he is doing a form...what's cool is how well he knows it (for the most part).  B has really been working with him so that he would know it well.
Here he's receiving his green belt.  I love that Master L talks about Eli's awesome smile!  We think it's pretty great, too!  He really does smile ALL THE TIME!!


Then to top everything off, Eli was the first Kim kid to get to spend an entire weekend alone with J and V in Austin.  J said that this year she wanted to have each Kim kid over alone for a weekend just to have fun.  What an awesome aunt and uncle right??  They wanted to pick Elina first but she started an art class on Saturdays for the month of March, so they went with the next oldest Kim kid.  

Eli had an amazing time with them!  He went to a UT basketball game, played video games, watched movies, went out to eat, bowled, and learned how to blow bubbles with bubble gum (one New Year's resolution checked off!!).

Whenever we all go to Austin as a family, we usually get takeout and eat at J's house...just because it's easier for me and B.  So when J took Eli out to eat during his visit, he asked, "Are we still in Austin??"  He couldn't believe he was eating out IN Austin!

When it was time for Eli to leave, he was so sad that he had tears in his eyes.  Poor boy.  He had the time of his life!  The funny thing is that we all really missed Eli while he was gone...even when we hung out with AM and his family, we all mentioned that it felt strange with Eli not there.  There was just "something" missing....this palpable excitement and energy for everything.  He definitely adds flavor to this family!

Eli's such a lucky boy and we're so lucky to have him!

Since I missed a post summarizing Eli at 7 years old, here are 10 facts about Eli--

1. He loves basketball.  Ever since we got the basketball hoop in the backyard, he always asks to shoot hoops after school.  It's awesome!  B is thrilled about it!

2. He loves playing video games.  This boy would play Wii all day if we let him.  He can't get enough of video games.  And the scary thing is, he's actually REALLY good at it.  I mean, REALLY REALLY good.  It's scary to me...but B is thrilled about it!  He's so happy to finally have a gamer who can help, rather than hinder.  Ha!

3. He loves karate and sparring.  His memory is getting better so he's remembering forms better now.

4. He's a real-live boy now.  He loves to yell, "Awesome, dude!" "Yeah, dude!" and things like that.  But he does it in this raspy, forced voice that he thinks is so funny.  He thinks a lot of things are extra funny now...especially bodily noises and smells.

5. He is really great at naturally incorporating dynamics into his piano playing.  I know this sounds weird, but it's actually a skill that doesn't come naturally to Elina even though she's been playing for longer than Eli.  From the beginning, he has always been sensitive to how loud or soft to play pieces.  Elina can play pieces quickly and memorize them in a heartbeat, but she doesn't incorporate dynamics on her own.  It's just amazing to see this difference in the two of them!

6. He copied bad behavior and has now seen the light.  When Eli first started the school year, he was entranced by a classmate (K) and his boyish behavior (which I can understand since Eli is always surrounded by girls!).  Eli and K would echo one another's "Yeah, dude!" all day long in class.  It was actually starting to be a distraction in class...to the point where the teacher discussed it with us at a parent-teacher conference in November.  You KNOW, I wasn't excited to hear that!  So we discussed it with Eli and after Christmas Break, he did a complete 180 and has stopped causing a ruckus.  I noticed it a few times when I visited the classroom.  Then I talked to him about it and he said, "Yea, I stopped because it's not funny all the time."  At our recent conference, his teacher commented on how much he's changed behavior-wise.  They said it can happen when kids see something new and they want to try it out...but we were all glad that he decided it wasn't for him!

7. He is not too afraid about making mistakes.  Eli is so chill about a lot of things and I think it helps with his reactions to mistakes in public.  For instance, when he plays at a recital and messes up a measure or forgets the next note, he is cool as a cucumber.  He won't stop, but he'll repeat the measure until he remembers or he'll continue if he makes a mistake...but you would never be able to tell from his face what just occurred.  This goes for presentations at school and everything else.  He recovers well.  I think Elina and I are very similar...instead of recovering, we break down or freeze.  Both are not good options.  Eli's got a real skill here!

8. He is super-empathetic.  This boy will tear up during movies ("Big Hero 6") or when his sisters get really hurt.  It is one of the sweetest things.

9. He loves hugs and snuggles.  Again, one of the sweetest things.

10. He gets so excited about everything that he's always bouncing up and down.  Literally.  He gets sweaty playing video games (like sweat dripping down the side of his face) because he's bouncing non-stop while he's playing....which is a good thing, I guess, since he's not being sedentary.  At basketball games, when he's on the court, he's bouncing up and down whether or not his team has the ball.  He's SO bouncy!  But it's only because he's SO excited!

So that's the quick recap on Eli.  He's still into Legos, drawing, biking, and bugs...but he's also changed a lot this past year--physically, mentally and emotionally.  We love this boy so much!  His excitement and smile are just nice to have around!