Two Birthdays in One Day

Ben turned seventeen last week, and he decided he wanted to invite friends over for a breakfast crepe bar.

I made a huge fruit salad and a quadruple batch of crepes, and then I let the kids go to town.

Teenagers crack me up.  As long as there is food and music, all is well.  Even though we have plenty of soft seats for them, they all ended up on the floor and stairs in the entry, milling around iPods and the piano.

A little fruit was left, but not a single crepe or strawberry.  I would call that a success.

Lily's birthday was April 4th, but we couldn't squeeze in a party for her until the 26th.  She was pretty patient with the whole delay, so I wanted to make it really fun.

 She and her friend Abby spent much of the afternoon preparing a paint game--tutorial later this week.

 There were accidents and explosions and laughter.  They even drafted Ben to help for a little while.

 As the girls arrived, they each made their own pretzel.

As the pretzels baked, we all went outside and got a little crazy with some paint.

 You never know with teenage girls if they're going to love the mess or turn up their noses in disgust.

 These girls loved it, and I was so glad!

 Three weeks late, and she finally got her birthday cake.

 It made me laugh how she carefully started to blow out the candles from one end, not bothering to hurry.

 She was trying to leave just one flame flickering (for whom, she won't disclose), but her youngest brother got a little impatient with all that and "helped" extinguish the last one.

Lily really wanted to play night games, so after cake, I sent the girls out with a plastic fork to play a game of "Bigger and Better"--trading what you have to your neighbors for something bigger and better.

They came home with a whoopie cushion and a few fake tattoos.  I don't consider either of those things bigger or better than a plastic fork, but it wasn't my competition.

We closed out the night with a scorpion hunt.

They found fourteen of these creepy crawlies.  Did you know scorpions glow like that when under a black light?  Gross, huh?  but that's how you find them hiding in the cracks of walls and under rocks.

Ben doused them with gasoline and lit them on fire--kind of a neighborhood tradition.  At least you know they're really dead, right?

And with that, birthday month at the Denton Sanatorium comes to a close.

Happy Birthday, my loves.