The girl is seven

On Thursday, Allison turned seven (and thank you to all who sent along your well wishes!) We had a dinner out at her choice of places on Wednesday (she had Brownies schedule for Thursday), and she surprised us by choosing Olive Garden (despite her not remembering whether she ate there before.) She took cupcakes to school for fellow studens on Thursday, as well as to Brownies that night.

But today was the BIg Party. Eight kids were invited, five arrived (all of the ones which where we gave the invite to the parent, rather than to the kid to take home; there’s a lesson there somewhere.) There were four boys and one girl, while the accompanying parents who hung around were four women and one guy. The children chased each other inside a bouncy house with a giant inflatable hammer marked “Princess”. They wielded a baseball bat against a poor, helpless papier mache, beating the beast until its guts spewed Almond Joys and Heath Bars. They turned each other into zombies, decorated their own cupcakes, consumed cartoonishly oversized pizza, and played frisbee golf with flying disks with their names written in Sharpie and the date and location of our wedding printed on the disk. They each left with a kite, a balloon, a dozen bouncy balls, a blank comic, and a non-blank comic. Happiness seem to have been had by all.

And we were left in good situation, as this event got us finally taking care of some things in the back yard – the furrows of the old garden have been tilled away, the pieces of the used jungle gym we bought and gave up on figuring out now stowed in the narrow gated side yard, the weeds beaten down to a managable level. The backyard has never been this clear in all the time we’ve lived here.

And the girl is proudly seven.