Double Digits and the Soda Privilege

Hannah turned ten the day before Thanksgiving!  The big 1-0!  She was elated and the following picture pretty much sums up the day.  She was bubbly, and that is something for Hannah.

We spent the day opening presents and hanging out with her grandparents who are visiting.  I did a little pre-Thanksgiving cooking too.  She chose Red Robin for her birthday meal.  She enjoyed bottomless mac-n-cheese (which she claimed was the best ever,) bottomless fries, and a bottomless Root Beer float.  This is not the place to go if you are shooting for moderation.  She was stuffed to the gills and generously donated her complementary dessert to her siblings.  Judah was especially ecstatic with the balloon.  He ran around the entryway squealing, "Boon!"

The reason for the Root Beer float was due to her ten year old privilege.  Each birthday comes with new responsibilities and at least one new privilege.  I don't know how much I have blogged about this tradition in our house, but I can't find a post where I list them out.  So I am going to attempt to do that here.

1 year - cake and dessert

2 year- juice and juice boxes

3 year - moving to a big bed

4 year - moving to a booster

5 year - chewing gum

6 year -  (Ahh!  For the life of me, none of us can remember this one!  Isaac is still very distraught about this.)

7 year - having a birthday party without boys/girls

8 year - wearing earrings (girls only), move out of a booster, can stay home alone

9 year - having the "birds and the bees" talk on a date with mom/dad, holding a baby while walking

10 year - having non-caffeinated sodas (Dad wants to add that this is on special occasions only, not their new water!), can have a sleepover instead of a party

Instead of a party, Hannah opted for a sleepover with SOME of her friends.  She really wanted Mimi to be there which turned out to be super helpful to me on many accounts.  The girls played outside for a bit when they first arrived, but they couldn't wait to get into their jammies.  

The girls played a couple of Minute to Win it games that I found with a friend's help on Pinterest.  For one game, they had to put Vaseline on their nose and transfer (using no hands) as many cotton balls as they could, one at a time from one bowl to another.  The girl with the most single transfers wins.  There was a tie between Genna and Lucy.

The other game was bouncing a ping pong ball on the table and trying to get it to land on the piece of bread covered in peanut butter at the other end of the table.  The ball had to bounce at least once and had to stay on the bread to count.  The tricky things about this game that I had not anticipated were that we had to remove balls once there were a couple of them or they impeded the incoming balls from sticking and I had to hand wipe down the balls and hand them back to the girls.  Hannah and Maeve tied this one up.

The girls made some easy little bracelets, and then ate dinner.  They ate meatball subs from Subway with my La Madeleine knock-off tomato soup.  I am not letting Hannah just pick the menu anymore since she had some strange requests and most of the girls didn't care for the food.  I told her, from now on, we are going with regular party food.  We also had Cool Ranch Doritos, cheese balls, Ritz crackers, and caramel popcorn (for the movie).   Of course, there was root beer and apple cider, since Genna can't have root beer yet.  (She handled that like a champ, by the way.)  Hannah really wanted to be involved in the planning of this party.  I did the games, and that was pretty much it.  She even made her own cake and decorated it with some instruction from me, but very little actual help.  I choose this style cake because she said she wanted whip cream frosting instead of regular icing.  I know how well that goes on a cake and knew it would need something to cover it up.

I watched a movie upstairs while the girls watched a movie on the big TV downstairs.  Rio 2 was the movie of choice as she had never seen it.  After that, I got the girls settled down in the basement and told them 2am was the absolute cutoff.  Then I went to bed.  I had one girl wake me at 2am and say everyone else was asleep, but she was upset and needed a snack and her sheets straightened out.  I got her all fixed up and went back to bed.

There's the wild and crazy bunch!

In the morning, we made pigs in a blanket and had little donuts.  Everything was splendid, but all the girls were a bit cranky that week.  Did I mention we had the party on a Sunday night?