Seventh Heaven

25 June 2011

It began at 6:30am with a string attached to her door trailing through the house filled with small gifts and $7,


and ended with a table full of seven year old fun...flowers, gifts, donuts and sugar cereal (okay, and 30-something year old fun too).

Jonas was most excited about the Trix.

After eating donuts (probably the worst tasting ever, I think the British do other baked goods much better than donuts)


and opening presents we quickly got dressed and ready for her party guests to arrive.

Very excited to get "Kate the Royal Wedding Fairy".

Grandpa's water guns were a big hit!

Look at that excitement over her new Cinderella doll - hopefully she isn't too mad at me for posting that picture!

Her new scooter is what I was most excited about.


And here is Nell sitting patiently while Clara opens her presents.

Wait, back up...it actually began way before 6:30am. In fact, the night before we were up quite late getting ready for this big event that Clara spends 364 days a year dreaming about. Devin was in charge of creating Hello Kitty out of a round cake as well as cutting out many felt hearts.

I was in charge of decorating the house, decorating the cake and figuring out the last minute details.

Anyway, back to the big day...her friends arrived at 10am. I had a few party activities planned. The first was to sew felt hair clips. Turns out this was much harder than I realized and resulted in 3 of the 8 girls sticking it out and the rest abandoning the project to run around like crazy and make plenty of noise. Thankfully Elizabeth stuck around to help out because between her, myself and Devin it was all we could do to thread needles and correct any sewing mistakes. Once the girls gave up, we took it upon ourselves to quickly finish up for them. Now that I am writing it, I realize how crazy it sounds that I ever thought it would be a good idea to sew with 8 seven year olds.

Here we are all working diligently:


And here we are about 5 minutes later (notice the decline in numbers)...


Here is a sample of the craziness. Jonas was right in the middle of it and convinced Clara's friend to push him around. He became very attached and is still talking about her. It was really cute to watch them together.


Anyway, once those were complete, we played a game of 4 corners. You have to be really quiet during this game so it was a nice reprieve (mostly for our poor upstairs neighbors I'm sure).

We then had fun decorating cupcakes and doing the pinata.


By now it was time to eat and have cake and ice cream before parents arrived.


British tradition is to send a piece of cake home with each child rather than eat it at the party so I tried to compromise and have them eat the cake at the party and take home their decorated cupcake. Hopefully nobody minded.

After the party we took Clara and her good friend Emeline to the base 4th of July party (yes, it is not at all on the 4th). I am so glad Clara has Emeline. They are such good friends and have been for so long, I love it when they play.


It was cold and windy and then became rainy but since it was her birthday, we spent 3 hours there rather than the 30 minutes I would have preferred. Afterall, if Nell could wait patiently in her stroller, I could wait graciously, right?


They stood in quite the queue to get their faces painted but it sure was worth the wait...


Clara has been asking to go on a ferris wheel for years, ever since reading about one in an Angelina Ballerina book. Her wish finally came true and she and Emeline had a blast. It was so cold and drizzly but they were all smiles. They rode it twice and were so cute together.


The only drawback to the day was the aftermath of a fully painted face...


It was such a fun day because Clara was so happy. I know she felt special and that was my goal. She is such a bright girl who lightens my life. The way she treats Nell and Jonas (most of the time) is so tender and sweet. They are lucky to have her for a sister - I know I would have loved to have Clara as my sister growing up!! Rather than sister, I get to have her as a daughter and what a blessing that is!

This is Clara's favorite part of our garden. She loves to hide here and even hid so well after church one week that we all went in and didn't notice her...that is until we heard sobbing outside about 10 minutes later and realized that Clara had been locked out!

Here is the interview I gave her recently to mark her 7th year...

What is your favorite food? Watermelon
What is your favorite toy? Art Easel
What is your favorite game? Princess Game at school with friends
What is your favorite book? Little Red Riding Hood
What is your favorite animal? Hard to pick between a horse and a panda
What do you want to be when you grow up? A teacher
Who are your friends? Emeline, Eleanor, Poppy, Abi, Leah, Veronica, Philippa
What would you like to do this year? Do gymnastics and ballet
What are some things you like to do? Play with my friends, Family Home Evening, play with Nell
What sports do you like? Golf and PE at school
What is your favorite thing to wear? dresses and skirts
What is your favorite color? Rainbow colors
What makes you happy? Nell
What makes you sad? When TV gets taken away