Sarah Kate turns 7!

First I will start by saying the common saying, "I can't believe my baby is 7 today."  I really can't.  She has done a lot in these 7 years and I am so proud of how well she has done with adjustments with so many moves and settled in so well to her new home and life here in England.  This year, I wanted to let her have a fun birthday party to invite her new friends over and get to know them better.  So we planned a girly tea party.  It was fun to plan with her and also to learn some cultural differences along the way too.

Let's see....

So we decided on a tea party where we were hoping to have a garden (back yard) party where to kids could play and do everything outside.  But we live in England, so in typical fashion, it rains yesterday.  Party is therefore set up inside.

SK invited all of the girls from her class and 1other friend (Ansley--from our church, who is a little older).  SO the total # invited was 13.  That's a big #, but we ended up with 8 girls total, so more easy to handle :)

We started out the party with "Musical Statues", a common game here.  I knew the game from teaching ballet, but I knew it as "Freeze Dance".  So it goes like this:  All the girls dance to music and when the music stops, you freeze.  If you don't freeze or wiggle, you are out.  Repeat, till 1 is left and they are the winner.

After dancing, we had set up our dining room cute for a little tea party for the girls.  Each girl got a plastic goblet that we let them decorate with jewels and ribbon and markers.  I didn't think that would entertain very long, but it did.  And the cups turned out so cute!

Next came the food.  The food we made (per SK's request) was chicken salad sandwiches, doritos, and fruit).  If you are American, you know what chicken salad is, right?  Not a dish made here though, so I had to explain a bit about what it was and if they didn't like it, they didn't have to eat it.  Then we had "lemonade" to drink.  Once again, if you are stateside, you think---lemons, sugar and water right?  Here, lemonade is more like sprite.  It is fizzy.  So we explained to the girls that we had "American lemonade" and "British lemonade" and let them choose :)  Then for dessert we had scones (that a sweet friend from our church made and came to help with the party!) and dirt cake.  The girls had never heard of dirt cake, so that was fun to explain what it was to them and have them try it.   I stood to the side and listened to the girls discussing amongst themselves the dirt cake.  Once conversation went like this:
"This cake is FANTASTIC!"
the girl beside her: "No, I am telling you...this is not fantastic, it's brilliant!"

It was hard not to just chuckle at hearing these sweet little British accents all in my dining room surrounding my big girl chatting over dirt cake and calling it "brilliant!".

Finally we played a game called "Pass the Parcel".  I had never heard of it, but it is a common game played here at kid's birthday parties.  So it works like this:  You wrap a "prize" with wrapping paper--our prize being a chocolate bar.  Then you wrap something else (we chose little gummy packs) in layers over the chocolate bar (think of an onion with layers of gummies).  Then you play music as the girls sit in a circle passing the "parcel".  When the music stops, whoever has the parcel, gets to unwrap a layer.  The music starts again and you continue till you get to the final layer (the prize) and when the music stops, that person holding the parcel gets the "prize".  It was fun :)

After that the girls went up to SK's room and played.  All in all, I would say it was a successful party and fun for us to get to meet the girls that I had heard SK talk about from her class.

Today is SK's actual birthday.  It is also a school day.  Since she has been homeschooled until this year, it means this will be the first year I won't be with my birthday girl all day.  Momma is a little sad about that, but know that SK will have a fun day at school.  She has requested pancakes and strawberries with powdered sugar for dipping for dinner.  Then she wants chocolate milkshakes for dessert.

Off to get moving for the day and wake my birthday girl soon!

Here are some pics from her party!