Pirate Party

Hyrum's birthday isn't technically until this Sunday, but we had his party last Saturday. His birthday always falls on Memorial Weekend so it's hard to have a party then when everyone is out of town so we just decided to move it up a week.

As most of you know Hyrum is obsessed about being a pirate, so naturally we had a pirate birthday party. For our invitations we printed them on parchment paper, cut them with torn edge scissors and decorated the edges with a chestnut cat's eye. Then we rolled them up and tied them with twine and put the into glass root beer bottles to deliver.

When the kids arrived, we tied a red sash around them and gave them a pirate hat. Then we had them go downstairs and watch Peter Pan until everyone arrived. The house and yard looked so cute. We had a skeleton dressed like a pirate hanging on the front door. There were skeleton flags leading up to the front steps and in the back yard. We had a pirate birthday banner in the window and another flag banner across the swing set. All over the house we had black balloons for our cannon balls. We also had a table outside all decorated with jewels and a pirate ship.

Once all the kids arrived we played pin the pirate next to the treasure. It was a little hard to fit everyone upstairs, but it was the only place with a flat space for the map. Then the kids went outside to dig for gold coins in the sandbox. They were so excited they got to keep the gold coins. After that we went in the front yard and had half of the kids swab the deck (paint brushes and water on the sidewalk) and the other half fish in our little kiddy pool we filled with magnetic fish and seashells. Then we went on a color treasure hunt where the kids found a treasure box filled with their goody bags (white cardstock box with the pirate symbol on it, red tissue paper and in the inside was a pirate patch and telescope, pirates of the Caribbean fruit snacks, pirate candy and jewels).

Then we opened presents and had cake and ice cream. Ben was up until 3 in the morning decorating the 2 cakes and they looked amazing. When the party was all done we had a barbecue with some friends and just relaxed. We didn't even bother cleaning up the house until Monday, because we were so pooped, but the party was fun! You can see more pictures in the album I created on my facebook site. The link is on my blog.

The amazing cakes Ben made! The first one's a chocolate cake that's decorated to look like an island, and the other is a white cake decorated like a pirate map.

Our little fishing pond!

Here's some of the kids digging for buried treasure.

I'm Meg

I've taken a few months off from musical theater after doing Beauty and the Beast last December, but I started getting stage hungry again this month. I noticed auditions for Sound of Music were coming up, and although I've never really wanted to be in Sound of Music, I really missed being on stage. I began working on an audition when about a week and a half ago I got an email about auditions for the Best of Disney. I knew they were going to be doing the Best of Disney, but last year they didn't hold auditions, so I just figured it wasn't an open audition. I was much more excited about the Disney production, but I would only have 3 days to put an audition together.

After talking with Ben, he convinced me to go ahead and try. There were a lot of good things about doing the Disney show instead of Sound of Music. The rehearsals for the Disney show are only going to be 3 weeks vs. 3 months for Sound of Music and there are only 2 weeks of shows vs. 1 month of shows.

I decided to sing "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes". The directors liked the song and cast me right there as Cinderella. I was excited because this song was much different from the songs I usually chose to sing.

They told me they would email me a schedule and cast list in a few days. Imagine my surprise when I opened the email and it had me cast as Meg from Hercules. I emailed them to double check if I should be working on "I Won't Say I'm In Love" instead and they emailed me back that they had in fact changed me to Meg.

At first I was a little disappointed because the Cinderella song was so different for me, but now I'm really excited about the Meg song. Her song is a really fun song, and it is also pretty different from what I usually sing. I'm used to singing Rogers and Hammerstein kind of stuff, so this spunky song is really going to be fun. Plus I get to have some of my friends be the Muses with me.

In all honesty I really don't look like Cinderella and look much more like Meg (minus the size 0 waist). I'm relieved I don't have to figure out how I'm going to be blond and not look awful! Besides I hear glass slippers are a killer to dance in.

Ella

I decided to take some pictures of Ella yesterday, since she didn't have any food stains on her clothes, her hair was still done, and she didn't have too many scratches, bruises, ect from playing.