Davan's Modified Birthday Bash

The weather, indeed, was really bad here yesterday. Basically, no one was out and about. It's just as bad today, if not worse because we're getting freezing rain now on top of the snow. This is what our backyard looks like today:


If anything, the street is worse with the drifts. People keep trying to go places and getting stuck. We were out shoveling this morning and pushed a couple of people along. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the drifts are a good 2-3 feet and crusted with ice now.

While we'll still go to Safari Sam's another time, we still spent all of yesterday celebrating Davan's birthday. She got to chose most of the day's activities and we had a feast day.

We started the day off with an obstacle course that we all helped set up, navigated and then helped to dismantle.

Davan crawling under the rope obstacle:

Me, making my way across the precariously balanced balance beam:Davan and Anthony working on solving the string obstacle. I took a break to snap the picture. The cats were in raptures about all the string.

Then it was time for homemade cinnamon rolls. We use biscuit dough to make them, so it's pretty fast to do them. We also had soy peppermint hot chocolate, garden sausages and pomegranate seeds. Over breakfast we had a nice discussion of everyone's most memorable birthdays.

After breakfast, Davan open the advent calendar for the day, which started her on a clue search around the house, leading her to a birthday letter I'd written to her, the piano to hear "Happy Birthday to You" played and sung and to her present. I'd gotten to the web page where the grips we wanted to order were and she got to pick out the exact ones she wanted and then we ordered them. It wasn't as good as if they'd been there to open, but it went okay. She was pretty excited about getting them. I didn't mention the Do Jump class that wasn't.

Then it was on to games that Davan had picked to play, giving us some more great (we think) action shots.





Once we'd played games, it was time for more food! Davan picked Tings to eat next. A game developed where we each said "someting" we enjoyed about life each time we ate a Ting.

We opted to chill out with a movie next. Davan had picked two movies to watch yesterday, if we felt like it, and the first was Duma. It was decent.

Next it was time to make the cake! Davan picked a dark chocolate cake to which we added chocolate chips. She's not a frosting lover, so we didn't have any.



While the cake was baking, we helped Davan set up an indoor playground, on which she played avidly for a while until she was ready to eat cake. It spread across the living room, toy room and down the hall, with things to balance on, climb on, jump on, go over and/or under and roll on.




When we'd all finished stuffing ourselves, we did another obstacle course on the playground before taking it down and watching the next movie - Prince Caspian - which we also found to be a decent movie. We don't watch a lot of movies and often find them so-so, but they were a nice chill out treat for yesterday.

After a little wrestling, it was time for bed. Davan had a great day, even though it was different than what had been originally planned. Anthony and I had fun, too.