The McKeown Family: Busy fall

October is a crazy busy month in the McKeown home. We have two little girls with birthdays this month and I feel like we party from start to finish. It's so much fun... and so much work. Adelaide and Lucy have the same due date (November 1) exactly two years apart. Their birthdays ended up being 9 days apart, landing on October 15 and 24. So, we really do spend a lot of time partying and eating garbage in October. We've had a couple of joint parties (not like drugs... ha!), but typically they like to have their own. I mean, let's face it. My kids have to share. A lot. They share at Christmas (Santa brings toys to everyone and we all share), Easter, every other holiday is shared. Their birthdays are the only days that are just for them. So, we try to make them special.
We start discussing their next birthday exactly 2 minutes after their party is over. It's true. Adelaide is already saying she's "almost 8." Let me adjust to 7 first, whydontcha. Anyway, Adelaide has been begging for a sleep over all year. She went to a sleep over last year and LOVED it! Well, let's just put it out there... I don't like bedtime with my own kids most of the time, I sure don't want to put everyone else's kids to bed. And I would also like to point out that although my firstborn is super smart and sweet and beautiful and such, she's pretty awful at making snap decisions. Quick example: she was asked to bring in 3 things in a paper bag that represent her for homework one day. It took us hours and she was literally in tears by the end of it. She was brining stuff like a bouncy ball. I would ask her, "What does that say about you?" *crickets* Then she would bring stickers... again, not something about you. We settled on a picture of her with her sisters, her small bible and her Irish dance shoes. She's just not good at coming up with a certain number of things in a short time frame.
Well, when we discussed the sleepover, I told her that she would have to narrow her invitation list to about girls. *insert deer in headlights look here* She named 4 children (I will not mention their names here because that would be terribly wrong and it doesn't really matter anyway) that she doesn't even hang out with anymore. I mean, they're sweet kids, but they aren't who I thought she'd pick. Well, when we talked about the fact that if we didn't have a sleepover, she could invite more friends, she was okay with that. We decided on an "almost sleepover" theme and it was a huge hit! We invited 28 children because the rule is if you invite one person from this area, then you invite them all. I do allow only girls, so we invited all the girls from her class at school, her bible class at church, her girl scout troop, the neighborhood, dance etc. Well, it was a friday night and I thought we might have half of them actually come. How about 22. 22 six and seven year old girls came to my house. Did I mention I was sick? Did I also mention Jason was in Washington D.C.? I'm so thankful that my parents were here and I hired the help of our babysitter for backup. I'm fairly certain if they hadn't been here I would have been sucking my thumb in a corner by the end of the night.
Okay, if anyone is still reading, here are some pictures of the night.