eight is great

Somehow, very strangely, apparently eight years have passed since the day Erin was born. I'm not exactly sure how this occured in what seems a whole lot less than eight years. I think I was just getting comfortable with her being 7 and now the twins are talking about their seventh birthday.

Erin has read and loved all seven Harry Potter novels, and after she finished each book, she watched the corresponding movies, and the last movie is due out shortly. She is all jazzed about seeing that final movie and she wanted a Harry Potter birthday party at our house. I thought this was a good idea but since I guessed that many of her friends haven't read the books, I convinced her to widen the scope of the party theme to include magic in general.

This made for a pretty simple party to plan and execute. First up, lunch, because I took lots of math in school and I know that K + P = H, (where K= kids, P=pizza, H= happy).
And some fruit and munchies served in plastic magician hats.


Next up, magician for hire. I didn't know any magicians so I chose one who came highly recommended (on Yelp). He had the kids laughing and engaged, but his magic tricks were fairly cheesy and John and I weren't overly impressed.

At one point he brought Erin up and dressed her a bit like Harry Potter before she assisted him.

And he got some other kids in the act too.


Nevermind that his secrets were often pretty obvious, the kids had fun.

After the show I brought out a couple of boxes of cheap magic tricks for the kids to try out themselves, and they had fun with those and/or playing in the backyard together until it was time for cake.
This fantastic castle cake was made by a friend:



After the cake John turned on a Tivo'd collection of Pixar short films, because he remembered the first film was about a magician, and the kids laughed and explored their goodie bags of magic tricks and tips, magic wand, and halloween Mad Libs until their parents picked them up.