Big Birthday Beach Bash!

So Callie had her friend birthday party early this year, she chose a "Beach Party in December" theme. We printed the invitations on tropical looking paper and then rolled them up & put the messages in bottles.
It was really hard coming up with ideas for summery things to do indoors. Water ballons are definitely OUT, as are squirt guns. People won't really want to play games with ice, either! I thought of doing some games & relays with a beach ball, but can you buy a beach ball ANYWHERE in December? Nooooooooooooooooooooo!
So we started out with the kids each getting a lei and sunglasses.

Got a batch of homemade ice cream started in the ice cream machine, then played the M&M game:


And made tissue paper flowers:

Then we played "Beach Charades" - all the words were beach themed and the kids had to quickly put on flippers and goggles before they could act out their words:


The two teams - the "Super Surfers" and the "Banana Doodles" ended in a tie, so Kyra stepped up to act out the tiebreaking word: Sand Dollar!

The Banana Doodles won, and there was much celebrating!

And then came trouble. Two other kids decided to carry Brynn like this and Brynn fell off backwards, whacking her head very hard on the tile floor. She was screaming & crying and all the party guests were hovering around while I tried to check & see if she was OK. Kyra was great, she really rose to the occasion, taking all the guests into the other room and teaching them a party game while I comforted, soothed, iced, and snuggled Brynn until she calmed down. Then I took Brynn and got her settled in on our bed with a video, and Kyra kept an eye on her while I finished the party.

We had our treats, which were modeled after something Callie found in a magazine:


And Callie opened her gifts:

And all the friends went home. A good time was had by (almost) all!

PS Notice the lack of snow in the background of the last picture of Callie? That was less than 24 hours ago. I took this picture just now:

Yup, that's about 8 inches of new snow, and it's still falling fast. Darrin tells me he shoveled "Go Pats!" into the driveway, but I don't even want to go see it for myself, so no pictures for you. Sorry!