Happy Birthday, Amelia!

Amelia turned eight on July 6th! We had a small family celebration at the house the night of July 5th, where Amelia was allowed to choose a special treat (not her birthday cake, that would come a few days later) after dinner.

Amelia selected oreo cookie cakeballs for the birthday treat, which we had made once before this past winter. The cakeball part of the recipe was a fail (I somehow made the interior consistency too runny so they weren't the right form to shape into balls), so we improvised instead and made an oreo pie. I layered the cakeball filling in a pan, spread the melted almond bark on top of the filling, added a few crushed oreos to the topping, and let it all get harden in the refrigerator. Success!

We celebrated at home the night of the 5th because July 6th was also the day Amelia left for her first sleep-away camp, a three-day, two-night Girl Scout camp in east Texas. Amelia enjoyed camp but we were all happy to see her again on Friday evening!


For her party this year, Amelia chose to have a small all-day celebration with her closest friends. This was our first year of not hosting a large party for 20-30 friends, and it all ended up working quite well. There is a new rule in the Wilson house. Large parties with the entire class/neighbors/and other friends until you are seven, then small parties!


The festivities began on Sunday in the early afternoon, with Amelia and four friends swimming at our favorite pool/water park in Plano. Below is the group of girls - Sarah, Margo, Kate, Amelia, and Lydia.
Scott and John came to the pool with us, and the girls played independently for over three hours. They seemed to have a ball playing together, which was great because I got to relax and enjoy spending time with John and Scott while the girl group did their thing.


The girls spent a lot of time in the inside pool, primarily on the lazy river. I went inside to watch them for a while and was amused by their strategy (or lack thereof) in getting girls out of the lazy river. Once several girls had made it outside of the current, they thought it would be a good idea to grab the remaining girls swirling around the circle with a human chain. But the current was too swift and once the lazy river girl had grabbed the hand of the human chain she would inevitably pull the last girl in the human chain into the swift current, thus defeating the purpose of using girls already out of the current to capture the remaining girls in the current. I watched them go around like this for over 15 minutes, never succeeding at getting more girls out of the curent than in, while they were laughing and giggling the whole time.

The girls also enjoyed the large outdoor water slides.

Once we had enough of the heat, I took the girls for frozen yogurt at yumilicious. The cold treat tasted amazing after being out in 100+ degrees all afternoon.

Then it was back to the house for arts and crafts. The girls used fabric paint to decorate canvas tote bags.

After the craft, the girls played for a while in Amelia's room and then we ate pizza for dinner. After pizza it was time for cake. A cookie cake, of course. It is Amelia's favorite!

Amelia's party lasted for seven hours on Sunday but the day flew by. All of the girls got along well and were extremely polite towards Scott and me. It was truly a pleasure to be around them and I know that Amelia enjoyed this small party with her good friends.

Happy birthday, sweet Amelia! We love you!