Where do I start... we had a fun-filled, packed weekend! There girls and I spent a portion of Friday preparing for Ashlyn's Halloween party. Yes, I know it is August, but who says you can't have a Halloween party in the middle of the summer? This of course was Ashlyn's idea; you probably could have guessed given her vivid imagination and love of parties. We made spiders and pumpkins out of egg cartons. The girls had a fun time painting the egg cartons (and a few body parts) while I anxiously followed their e
very move with paper towels and a watchful eye to try to avoid any major messes. Luckily the paint is washable so I was able to get it off the table, the girls' skin and clothes, and even the few little splatters Avery managed to get on the wall wiped off! Whew!
While Avery napped, Ashlyn and I snuck off to the Friends of the Library book sale where we bought a paper sack full of used books. We both enjoyed rummaging through boxes and boxes of old or worn books and I even found some of my old favorites from when I was young. After dinner Ashlyn hosted the Halloween party where we dressed Chris up as a mummy, wrapping him in layers of toilet paper and then read a couple of Halloween books we found at the book sale that day. Who knew you can throw a Halloween party for less than $5 bucks.
On Saturday I spent a couple hours at church volunteering with the Special Angels. This is an organization that works with special needs children on Sunday mornings in their Sunday school classes as well as on occasional Saturday afternoons giving their parents a time of respite and the kids fun experiences with friends. I've been involved with this group for a year and I truely enjoy being a part of it.
Afterwards, the whole family went to Ryann's 4th birthday party. She is the daughter of my close f
riend, Katie, from Baylor. The princess party was at the studio where Ryann takes dance and each guest was to dress up. Ashlyn chose to wear her lilac leotard and ballet skirt and a pair of butterfly wings. She said she was the tooth fairy. Avery wore Ashlyn's old pink ballet leotard and a pink tutu from the dress-up trunk. When I put this tiny pink leotard on Avery, I could hardly remember Ashlyn being so small. How much she has grown up in just over a year's time when she was wearing that very same leotard Avery is now wearing. As soon as we arrived at the party, Ashlyn barely took the time to take her shoes off before she ran straight into the dance studio with the other girls. Avery hung out at the door to the studio by my feet for a short time while she examined the scene and then jumped right in with the big girls and became quite the little entertainer for the parents. The girls were very excited to learn a princess dance, play a princess dress-up relay race, do the hokey pokey and chicken dance and, the best part, cake and ice cream.
Our day did not end there! We then headed to our Sunday school class pool party at our teacher, Mike's, house. Ashlyn wore out the diving board... jumping off forwards, backwards, cannon balls and an occasional belly flop. Even Avery jumped off a few times! After she saw her big sister do it, of course, she had to do it. Our Sunday school teacher and his wife are probably in their mid to late 50's. After we left the party Ashlyn said to me (having never met them before the party), "I didn't know those people that own that house were so old. They both had white hair; REALLY white hair!" I was just glad that she waited until after we left the party to express her observations.
T
oday after church, while we were on our way home Ashlyn decided she wanted to build a lemonade stand and sell lemonade. She persisted for some time after we got home until Chris and I knew she wasn't going to give up on the idea. Fortunately for us, we didn't have to build one since I had bought a cardboard lemonade stand several months ago and had not given it to the girls yet. When I asked Ashlyn how much she was going to charge for a glass of lemonade she said, "Oh, maybe a nickel." I told her I bet she could probably charge a quarter, and she said, "OK, but if they don't have a quarter they can just give whatever they have." I thought her comment showed how kind-hearted and sweet she so often is. After decorating and assembling the stand, we made some pink lemonade, gathered our supplies and headed out to the front yard. It must have been the gir
ls' lucky day because just as we were heading outside the power to the entire neighborhood went out. Several neighbors wandered outside to see what the cause of the power outage might be and spotted the girls eagerly awaiting a thirsty customer. each time Ashlyn saw someone she would become so excited for another potential customer. We had several great neighbor come support their lemonade "business" offering to pay up to $1 per glass. The girls made $5 in about an hour (that's as long as Chris and I could bear the 106 degree weather). Ashlyn and Avery were very cute greeting and serving their customers. I think we may have some budding entrepreneurs! I guess they take after their daddy in that regard!
While we were making the lemonade I was reminded of our visit to Alabama last December. Ashlyn picked lemons with her great grandparents from their lemon tree, squeezed the juice from the lemons, mixed in a little water and sugar and we all enjoyed fresh squeezed lemonade. (more to come soon about that trip in another post)
