Better Late than Never

Although Michael's actual birthday was about 3 weeks ago, we just had his party this past Friday night. Hey!--We've been busy! It's better late than never, right? We invited nine of Michael's friends over to enjoy sledding in our backyard. Tom made a fire for them to roast hot dogs and marshmallows. When the sledding took a turn for dangerous (as it usually does when boys are involved) we shut down the hill. Luckily that was before anyone really got hurt. Then we had a scavenger hunt. Clues were place around the property attached with colored ribbon. They boys formed two teams and each team had to find one clue before running back to base and tagging the other team. Once all the clues were found, they had to put together a puzzle that pictured where the treasure was buried. Then they had to dig through the snow to find it. The night before Tom and I had placed dollar bills and coins in cups of colored water. The frozen goods looked liked gems under the white snow. We all finally came inside for some warm chili and "cake". This was the first time I didn't actually make a cake for my child. Instead we created snowmen from powdered doughnuts and candy. It turned out to be more difficult to do than we thought. Some of the boys gave up and just enjoyed the frosting. Isabelle helped prepare for the party by making all of the snowmen favor bags. We stuffed the bags with a stocking cap, candy cane, hot chocolate packet, noise maker, and "Michael's Cooool Jams" cd. Hattie did a great job ripping and burning the music. It was a fantastic party!