Enchanted Forest

I don't have any writerly juices tonight, so here's Family Theme Night, Picture Edition:

Teri did a beautiful job decorating

 These lights were stunning in the dark

 Carey and Teri dining

 Getting ready for appetizers

The kids ready to eat

 One-eyed, one horned, flying purple...diva?

 Me and Clint (the tiny blue fairy)

 Full after dinner

 Mike and Moo (she's a dragonfly princess, we don't know what he is)

 The kids--a fairy, Tardis, flying squirrel, and troll

(don't ask me what a Tardis has to do with an Enchanted Forest)

 Trin and Elijah

Moo made Trin's costume and Teri made Elijah's.
I helped by oohing and ahhing over them.

 Teri and Carey (Mother Nature and a garden gnome)

 Family Photo

 Sweet Pea with her amazing birthday cake
(yes, that's a cake, courtesy of Teri)

 Trinity preparing Sweet Pea for a skit

 Releasing a Chinese sky lantern into the air

 Sweet Pea's dream cake again

The fam was celebrating my birthday too,

so Teri made me my own chocolate "villain's" cake

to go with Sweet's.  Holy cow was it delicious.

The only other thing worth mentioning is when we released our Chinese sky lantern, it went straight into a gigantic car-sized bush.  That was a fun little moment of panic as everyone lunged for the lantern, trying to grab it before the bush caught on fire. 

Oh, and our skits.  We had a target on the wall with character's names and random settings/activities.  Each one of us threw a velcro ball against the target until we hit one character's name and one setting.  For example, I got "Ariel singing rock karaoke."  Then we had to act it out in front of everyone, and see if they could guess who we were and what we were doing.  It was super fun.  My favorite was Mike's skit, and Clint's.  Mike had to pretend to be a scared camper jumping from flower to flower.  It was really cute.  Clint, on the other hand, had to act out "Big Bad Wolf in a hair salon."  So he sits down in a fake barber chair and starts saying, "My, what BIG SCISSORS you have.  My, what a BIG HAIRBRUSH you have."  It was hilarious.

One more thing. I got an old-fashioned gumball machine for my birthday.  I've wanted one ever since I wrote my "Gumball" story.  Although ironically my new gumball machine is full of peanut M&Ms right now.

Okay, now I'm done for real.