Each brings a greater joy to me

E's 8 year old birthday party.  At our apartment, beginning 3 pm, was supposed to last until 5.

Planned activities: make cards or other paper crafts (ready supply of pencils, colored papers, stick glue, scissors), pin the tail on the dog (E painted the dog herself), cake (E chose no ice cream), open presents from guests. All the planned activities took half an hour.

Spontaneous activities, dreamed up by the girls (these are three of her friends from school, so they have lots of experience playing together at recess etc): crawling in the Dora tunnel or standing it up and dancing in it, piling baloons in the Dora tent, popping the balloons, playing with the presents they gave E, taking out ALL the kid dressup clothes (we have a suitcaseful) and trying on everything that would fit, bouncing on the exercise ball, playing hide and seek (we had NO idea that our 4 rooms had so many good hiding spots, and not the usual under the bed!), and bouncing on the bunk bed (which they all thought was cool, no one had ever seen one for real).

One girl brought a younger sister (without asking, I might add), who is 3, and she played quietly on her own or with our 2-going-on-five-year old A.  Only K, our four-year-and-half year old, wanted to join in and got left out.

E wanted her friends to stay and watch some movies, but we said, no, its already late.  The girls called their parents (who knew so many 7 year olds had cell phones?) and the last guest left at 6.30.  We were exhausted, but the birthday girl had fun.  Of course, no one got to bed on time that night....