Six Year-Old V.I.P.s

Paige and Graham went with me to pick out their party invitations this year. Last year's voyage to the stationery store resulted in home sketched knights and princesses for their boy/girl royalty-themed party. This year, however, they both surprisingly glommed on to a black lanyard with silver print that said V. I. P. Of course, they had no idea what it means to be a V. I. P., but liked the fact that the invitation didn't look babyish and served a double purpose of being an around-your-neck entrance tag. So we did it, and I spent the next few weeks wracking my brain for age appropriate V. I. P. things (they now know what that means)

With a very successful iPod playlist, a somewhat successful red carpet made of $6.99 vinyl table cloth, a bungee, chick-fil-a breakfast food delivered, Emily and crew to work the face painting, S.W.A.G. corner, etc...we ended up with a highly successful party. I even got some great ideas from Cookie magazine, which coincidentally ran a rock-star party them article from which I got great inspiration for the dance floor (at 9 a.m. we had a disco ball hanging from the oak tree and used recycled Dennyboard from our construction for the dance floor) and the punk hair station (organic hair putty, yes, it does exist!)

Other successful ideas included ordering a full white sheet cake and buying oodles of cake toppers, allowing each guest to have a piece with a topper on it of their choosing. I had them sing happy birthday to everyone, too, since our twin birthdays were three months ago. We had fun with sack races and the newly installed zip line in our side yard was the muddy hit of the afterparty with the neighborhood gang and a few welcome stragglers.

A very big key to having these bashes is all the help we enlist, and this year we had 4 Rice grads and one amazing-Aggie-sophomore Bevie. It is SO FUN, and we are always sad when it is over. And I know all the words to "Party in the U.S.A" now (and Katie cringed at the artist-with-an-alter-ego being included in our playlist). So I guess we are graduating into that next level of childhood.