Sixty Sticky Fingers: For the Love of Eleven

My Lexxi-girl is 11!!

Her birthday was the 17th.

For her big day this year, she wanted to have a slumber party with her big sis and their two best friends, Jessica and Nicole.

So we spent all our spare minutes that week shopping for the decorations, candy, food, candy, movies, candy, fun stuff, and did I mention candy? that were on her list for the fun night. (well, you only turn 11 once, right?)

We planned out the fun, rearranged the girls' room, moved their desks out from under their beds so we could put air mattresses underneath for Jess and Nicki, and even hung curtains around their beds for an extra fun touch.

Lexxi wanted to do a special birthday breakfast for her friends, and my thoughts were pretty much "absolutely, you make a list of things I don't have to cook, we'll put the little fridge in your room for the night with all the food, and you girls can handle it", which they could not have been more thrilled about. They got to not only have their lovely breakfast, but also be "in charge", and I still got to sleep in on my Saturday, win-win.

It was all a bit of work, but really turned out great.

(If you could just hear the squeals that came out of all these girls as Jess and Nicki entered their room, threw sleeping bags and girlie things all over, and filled each other in on all the fun and plans for the next 24 hours. Priceless.)

(We set up a mock breakfast before Jess and Nicole came over, so that I could take pics the night before, then the girls put it all in the little fridge in their room to surprise their friends in the morning.)

They stayed up super late watching girlie movies on my laptop in their room, and eating gobs of popcorn and m&m's.

Next morning, they got themselves up, got all dressed up, and did each other's hair.

(And all of these pictures are taken by them. I was still in bed happily snoozing. )

Then they had themselves a fancy breakfast.

After breakfast they did a scavenger hunt that included several games.

In this one, they had to chew 3 pieces of gum, then make tiny statues of the birthday girl.

Another was the classic dress-up relay.

Here they are reading clues, and heading all over the house and yard to follow them.

Water balloon toss...

Balloon popping to get all the papers out of them to unscramble the next clue...

They also had a contest to see who could keep a straight face with a warhead candy in their mouth.

No pictures of the girls, but when the boys asked for candy later...

I told them not to eat them 'til I got the camera out. Isaac had just popped his in his mouth here, hahaha.

There's something very wrong with this candy, mom.

After all their fun and games, and finding their final prize of movie tickets and more junk food, they crashed in the girls' room with more movie watching.

Then they sucked the helium out of all the balloons and laughed their heads off as they videoed themselves singing. Awesome.

They thoroughly enjoyed the day with their friends till Saturday evening.

Then Lexx got all dressed up for her special dinner out.

She tried lots of new things, among which were panisse fries, shrimp and vegetable fritture, an incredible soup (that I can't remember the name of), truffle sauce,

an exotic tart, creme brulee, and a chocolate square with fleur de sel on top (which means by the way, flower of salt, which is basically hand-harvested sea salt collected by scraping only the top layer of the salt before it sinks to the bottom of the pan. It has the highest quality and best flavor).

Such. Amazing. Food.

I willingly put on 15 pounds that night.

She loved all of it, except the soup, it was just a tad too spicy for her.