And Finally, Party Pictures

Aww, look at that face. And Naomi is pretty cute, too. yuk yuk. We had Naomi's party in the afternoon, with the fairy tale (kind of) theme as planned. There aren't many photos, actually, for two reasons. Jim, the staff photographer, spent some time filming with the video camera, and some time entertaining the other dads. There was not much time left after that.

The good part of that is that we have some fun video of the treasure hunt. I was banking on our friends from church coming, because their daughter is in the second grade and can read. The girls found the clues, and she read each one to the little gaggle. They needed some prompting, but they found them all. The last clue directed them to the basement, where we had some bins set up with a lot of rice and some very faux gems hidden in it. This is an idea borrowed from my grad school friend, so thanks a lot, A! The girls had a good time digging out the gems, and then we went back upstairs and decorated little wooden boxes with them and with some fancy glitter foam stickers.

Then, there was cake. It was lopsided and overly sweet. In fact, Naomi told me she didn't like the frosting, which sounded a little like opposite day to me. Oh well. By the time we got to the cake, she was already feeling a little overwhelmed by the party, which you can kind of see in her face here:


And you can see her finished box there too. Treasure-y! There were eight girls total; Muriel was the youngest. Four sets of two sisters! Do we know how to pick friends or what?

In the background of this fun shot is Muriel doing some kind of America's Next Top Model hair flip move. But also, the now famous beanstalk, which was both decoration and one of the treasure hunt clue stops. I had asked Jim to draw a little Jack we could tape up, to complete the scene, and here's what he came up with instead:

Is this not so David Lynch? When Naomi came out, on the morning of her birthday, and saw the beanstalk, her reaction was so funny. She was almost angry. She said, "That is not a real beanstalk. That is not Jack. That is Muriel's Sock Baby, with a sock on her head!" Like we were going to mess with her and try to get her to think we had planted some magic beans there in the wood floor. Hee! She's growing up alright.