SURPRISE!!!

It’s been a slow week for the blog because I’ve been spending every waking, non-working moment getting ready for Aliya’s surprise birthday party. She was definitely surprised. If you attended the party, you can skip to the pictures. For the rest of you and for posterity, here are the details…

The party attendees were Maren, Reece, Lindsey, Emma, Isabel, Brooke, Victoria, Arete, Erin F, Erin G, Solvai, and of course, Aliya – an even dozen (some of the siblings also attended – Aden, Max, Shane, Sydney, and Ryan, plus Adlani and Norah). Ginny and Bernie took Aliya and Victoria to the mall, and everyone else arrived at our house at 6 p.m. I had pillowcases for them to color on with fabric markers, and Bernie made a slideshow of pictures which they loved. Aliya didn’t arrive until around 6:30 and it was a looooooong half hour with a lot of excitement-induced screaming. There were several false alarms which drove everyone under the blankets to hide. Aliya’s arrival was heralded by even more screaming, jumping up and down, and hugging that bordered on wrestling.

It was a half-sleepover (a sleepover without the sleeping), so everyone wore their pajamas. The family room was decorated with strings of lights and bed canopies, plus blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals. I ordered pizza, bought Roche Brothers drummies, and made Caesar salad, Tastefully Simple beer bread and some crackers and dips. I couldn’t decide on a sangria recipe so I made 2 and we did a taste test. The recipe that won was the one from Dali, a great Spanish restaurant on the Cambridge/Somerville line. To make 1 batch, I used 1 bottle of Marques De Caceres Rioja, 1/3 cup peach brandy, 1/3 cup triple sec, 1/3 cup sugar, and 3 cups of orange juice.

After pizza, the boys headed down to the playroom with flashlights to search for hidden candy. We didn’t see them again until it was time for the pinata. The girls played a few games:

>> Dance Till You Drop – dance around until the music stops, drop onto a marked spot, the person sitting on the spot that matched the goody bag I was holding won the goody bag and its contents

>> Pass The Parcel – sit in a circle, pass a wrapped package, when the music stops, the person holding it got to open one layer of giftwrap and claim the lipgloss in that layer, the final person got a chapstick set

>> Super Speedy Dress-Up – stand in a circle and pass 2 bags of clothes and accessories, when the music stops, the bag-holders reached into the bag, grabbed an item of clothing and put it on, the person with the most items on at the end was the winner. This game was hysterical or maybe it was the sangria. I took a group picture afterward for the girls to take home.

We tried to play piggly wiggly (everyone hides under the blankets and a farmer tries to guess the identity of one of the lumps when the lump yells “oink oink oink”. There were some injuries due to farmers stepping on piggies and piggies squishing other piggies so we abandoned that game and went straight to the flip-flop pinata, which I beat to pieces after each of the kids had a whack. Then I started a movie (Bratz Kids Sleepover) and got the cakes ready. They were “sleepover” cakes, each with 6 girls made of Twinkies laying in bed. Pretty cute.

After the cake, everyone went back to the movie, and the girls continued working on their pillowcases. The last game was Munchie Match, where the girls chose overturned cups with candy inside, looking for a match. When someone found a match, they got to keep the candy. That was a nice quiet game to calm things down. The kids left by 9ish, and Aliya opened her presents with Nikki and Leah. She loooooved everything she got, and she went right to the computer to register her Webkinz with Leah’s help.

It was a great success, although it took a lot of preparation and the house looked like a tornado had blown through. Thanks to Ginny, it was clean by around 10 a.m. I did learn from this experience – Hawaiian Punch is NOT a good drink selection for a kids’ party. My rug is proof of that.