Jennifer's Slumber Party

My niece Jennifer hosted a slumber party Friday, June 1. In attendance were my niece Stephanie and her kids, Brock, Ashlyn and Allie; my niece Tina; my sister Martha and her niece (on her husband's side) Hannah; and a very special guest, my great-nephew Bryant. He's the son of my late nephew Jeff. We don't get to see him very often, so it was really a treat to have him there. I hadn't seen him in a few years and he had changed a lot since then. He is 17 now and looks so much like his dad -- it's really amazing. He is a very cool kid, but not "too cool" to play with all the little kids like Bridget, who quickly developed a major crush on him. Here's a picture of Bridget and Tessa chasing Bryant:



Here's a close-up of Bryant:



Jennifer had lots of activities to keep the kids (and adults) busy. We made melty-plastic art (I'm sure that's not the technical name for it), which involved placing tiny multicolored plastic circles inside stencils and then ironing the shapes to melt them together into one piece. The kids showed more patience than I expected with this painstaking process. Tessa in particular seemed to love it.

In the evening, we played various games outside, including badminton, frisbee, kickball and dodgeball. There was a difference of opinion as to how dodgeball should be played. Now, I'm old school when it comes to dodgeball. You know, two teams -- one team makes a circle and the other team gets inside the circle; the team on the outside tries to hit the people on the inside; last one standing is the winner. Nowadays, they play it more like the game we called battleball, where the two side stand in lines facing each other and the object seems to be more about catching the ball when it's thrown towards you than dodging the ball. We settled our debate peaceably, and played it both ways.

Here's a cute photo of Bridget and Brock. Looks like it was a deep conversation:



In the evening, we made earrings. it was so much fun and we came up with some pretty cool creations. Jennifer bought some clip-on earring backs so that Bridget and Tessa could make earrings, too. Bridget especially loved this craft and was really good at choosing beads that went well together. Here she is modeling some of her earrings (that's Tina in the background):



Here's Tessa modeling some of her earrings:



The next morning, Jennifer made pancakes for all of us -- yummy!! Thanks Jennifer, for hosting the party. The girls and I had a blast!!

Note: I stole all the photos for this blog entry from Jennifer's blog. Thanks again, Jennifer! : )