Melissa's Birthday

The kids and I were just looking back at past blogs and I realized that in my busy March month I didn't blog Melissa's birthday. This is one of my more prouder moments as a parent and it needs to be documented. Kind of silly, but being able to pull off Melissa's birthday was a momentous occasion. We did a surprise party for her... In our family we have set the rule that they get a friend party on their odd birthdays and a family party on their even birthdays. This year Melissa was turning ten which meant family party. Michelle and Brett were supposed to come to Utah for General Conference and I can't quite remember why they didn't, but we were planning on doing something for Melissa when they were here so that Rebecca could be there.

Anyway, when we found out they weren't coming and realized that fitting a birthday party in would be tricky, I came up with the idea to surprise her. So, we told Melissa that since Rebecca wasn't coming we would just do a family party on Saturday after the Priesthood session of conference. Melissa's actual birthday was the Sunday before conference. So, I decided to do it on the day after her birthday after her dance class. I had made her an icecream cake while she was at school and so it was in the freezer out of sight. We did have a close call though when she asked me after school if she could have something out of the freezer, but I told her no because there wasn't enough for Jenna and Spencer to have some too. Whew...

We told everyone to come at about ten to seven so that they would all be here before she got home from dance. Everyone was very nice to park down the street and hoof it to our house. We carpool with our next door neighbor, so when they dropped her off at home, we were all there waiting to surprise her! And boy was she surprised! I didn't get a picture of her actually coming in the door, I was doing the video camera at the time, but she had a look of complete surprise. She was a little embarassed to be in her dance clothes, so went and changed before she opened presents and ate cake.

I don't think she stopped smiling the entire party...
I didn't have enough candles for ten, so we improvised and put a four and a six on the cake and you can kind of see the plus sign we fashioned between them out of toothpicks. What can I say, I'm a math freak! It was a very fun party and everyone was so nice to come and make the evening special for Melissa.