Sparkle Party

Hannah and Sophia invited Aunt Mindy and myself to a

Sparkle Party!

 We were told to wear our pj's and to bring our favorite CDs.

 They had decorated the house with lots and lots of sparkles!

                                                                          The sparkly partiers in their pjs and sparkly crowns.

 Baby Claire was not interested.  A nap sounded much better to her.

So she was put to bed.

There was a list of activities for the party.  The first thing we did was to decorate cups with sparkly glitter glue and sparkly stickers.  During the whole morning, we took turns listening to everyone's favorite music on the CD's we had brought.

 Second, we painted sparkly pictures.

 Third on the list was to paint our nails with sparkly nail polish.

Then, because Aunt Mindy missed the girls' ballet recital, we watched the girls dancing in their sparkly outfits.

 

That's me!

 The next project was to make fancy, sparkly scarves.

 Or if you wanted, a pretty belt.

 They had put up a big red sheet so we could do a photo shoot session.

The last thing on the list was to make a game.  We each got colored paper and we wrote out any instructions we wanted on them.  Like "moo like a cow", "move forward 2 spaces" "sqwauk like a chicken and move back 5 spaces".   These were placed on the floor with plain white sheets of paper in between.

 They had a huge die we rolled.  The first 3 players all rolled a 4 and had to share a space.

Hannah was the first to get to the finish line. 

By this time, our stomachs were growling.   Good thing the pizza delivery guy arrived.

 And after pizza, we had sparkly ice-cream for dessert!

Claire decided it was time to wake up and eat too.  Then her big sisters held her.  Because they love her so much.

Little Claire, little sisters might rock, but you know what? 

Your big sisters

rock too!

Thank you both for such fun at your sparkly party!!

Bird farm

After we finished picking peaches at the Entz orchard, Elaine took us to her neighbor's (about 3 miles from her place).  They have these cool birds -quail, pheasants and chucker, that they breed and sell.  Elaine knows I love birds and thought I would enjoy this place.  Elaine is like that - always so thoughtful of others!



When we arrived at the neighbor's place, the first thing we noticed was the beautiful hibiscus.  Wow!

We were shown the baby birds first.

 Aren't they so very small and cute??

This is the man who showed us around.  He is the hired man who comes twice a week to help out.  You could tell that he loved his job. 

When the babies are 3 weeks old, they are moved to another pen.  When we lifted the lid, they ran like crazy, back and forth.  You can just see how fast they were going by the blurry motion!

 As they age, they are moved to other pens.  We saw several variety of pheasants - red, silver and gold.

They have these clips around their beaks so they don't peck at each other.  They almost look like those plastic things that twist shut packages of bread!

 Before I saw them I heard them.  "Bob-white!"  "Bob-white!"  Did you know that bobwhites are quail?

 And here are the chuckers.  I had never heard of such a bird before.

One bird had escaped.  A net is used to capture them to return them to the pen.

I thought it was funny that they use the covering on these pens to keep them cool.  It is the same stuff the army uses. 

They keep around 6,000 birds on this place.  What started out as a hobby ended up to be this big operation!  They sell the birds to individuals, other breeders, hunters for dog training, and ranchers.  He says they always sell out - every year.  They are in the process of adding on.

 One little girl was getting pretty worn out.

 Our trunk was full of ripe peaches so we took a peach break before going back to Elaine's.

 YUM!!

We drove Elaine back home and she said "We just had some baby kitties.  Want to see them?"  Of course we would!!  We all love kittens!

 These kittens were shy and not tame yet.  They would scurry down a hole and scamper under the deck.

Elaine has some pretty birds too!

As we were getting ready to leave, the Voths from church arrived.  Tami and her kids were in the orchard picking peaches and invited them to come also.

 Sweet Jude who is in our nursery.  I get to see him every week!

The country roads were dry and dusty (we are in a drought spell here in Kansas!) and my car was very dirty. 

Luckily I have a couple of girls who love to help wash the car!  So that is what we did when we got back to town.

What a fun morning we had!  Looking forward to eating fresh peaches, peach pie, peach cobbler....