Happy 1/2 Birthday!

Once upon a time a million years ago, Kevin wrote a song for a flighty girlfriend to wish her a happy half birthday. He and Allen used the 4-track and recorded piano, trumpet, drums, backup vocals, and the main vocal track. It took days -- this must have been the Thanksgiving after our engagement when we went to Saratoga. It was a great song. When this chick didn't appropriately swoon, we knew she was no good.



Our Ella's birthday is in the middle of August which, around here, is the week school starts. We've never managed to have a birthday party for her because things were invariably too busy or she'd just started a new school and didn't really have friends yet or... or ... or ...

This year, Ella was definitely aware of all of the excitement surrounding Sarah's party 2 weeks ago and she decided that it just wasn't fair. So we talked about it and decided a la Kevin to celebrate her half birthday instead. A couple of years ago Target had some great easter hats in their dollar bins and I bought six. The next year they had white gloves and I bought those. We had the start of a fun tea party. So we invited 5 friends and had them come in party dresses.

We started things out by having them color some wooden flowers as place cards at the table


Then we had each girl choose some silk flowers and ribbon and decorated their hats. They each chose a feather boa and some mardi gras beads to complete their ensemble.


Don't they look great!

Then we played pin the teacup on the teapot and teacup, teacup, cream puff (duck duck goose) which was fun. We decided to open presents next.



And then we went in for tea. Ella blew out the 5 1/2 candles on the half cake


We served cream puffs, raspberry cream cheese tea sandwiches, little club sandwiches (which were a surprise favorite), cake and apple juice for tea.



We had a lot of fun and Ella was thrilled to be the star for once (we think Sarah might need some therapy, because she was not happy about Ella getting so much attention).