Eliza Grace is 9! One more year 'til double digits - wow!The rule in our family is odd birthdays are small affairs and even ones can be a somewhat bigger deal. So in theory this would have been a small, low key celebration. In theory.
This year Eliza Grace had three friends over for a slumber party. The festivities began Friday evening and, after much greeting and giggling and chatting, we started work on the make-your-own pizzas.
From the beginning,Will became fully vested in his role of pesky little brother.With dinner done, we moved on to presents!
Then it was time for cake and ice cream.Eliza Grace wanted a Harry Potter theme. We looked around the web for ideas and decided on an open book cake. I called some local bakeries and when I learned that the price for such a cake started at $200, I told her that I thought we could make it ourselves.
The good news is that Eliza Grace wanted to fashion all of the fondant items on the cake and I was happy to let her do it!
Click on the picture below for explanations of this beast which used 3 boxed cake mixes.
It takes a lot of cheek puffing to get nine candles out!
Next, Scott set up Eliza Grace's gift from us which was a theater that we bought on Woot! months ago.It goes up like a tent and each side of the theater has a different purpose: the front side has curtains that open and close for performances
the left side is a ticket selling booth
the right side is the refreshment stand 
and the back side is the dressing room/stage entrance. Admittedly it is a little big (5 ft tall) so I am sure we will tear it down soon and then put it up again when the urge to perform returns.As you can imagine, the next order of business was to get into costumes and put on a show!
"I'm a spider-man cowboy pirate."
After much silliness it was time to get into jammies, eat popcorn and watch a movie.
The girls were all abed in Eliza Grace's room by 10:30pm. Unfortunately a copious amount of sugar mixed with lots of excitement necessitated my very final command for silence at 1:30am!We began the next morning with the birthday girl's request for chocolate chip pancakes after which everyone decorated their own picture frame as a keepsake.
One guest had to leave shortly thereafter but I took the remaining kids to McDonald's for lunch and then ice skating at the Polar Ice House in Cary.Here is a quick look at the birthday girl at the rink:
Thankfully we got there right when they opened for public skating because within 45 minutes the place was packed and the rink was awfully crowded.
It was a really fun and really exhausting birthday celebration and Eliza Grace said that it was "really, really the best ever!" Can't ask for more than that.
