Birthday Bash and Baptism

For Abby's eighth birthday this year, we invited 12 girls to our house for a three-hour pajama (or pyjama if your English) party. The girls had their nails and hair done by our lovely hair and nail artists. The picture above is of Abby and Sammy getting their nails and hair done before all the guests arrived. 

Some of the decorations...

More pictures of the girls getting ready for the big night.

The guests arrived and waited their turn while our nail and hair artists did all 12 girls' hair, finger nails and even some toe nails! They worked non-stop for the entire three hours! They were amazing! I couldn't get them to stop for a break at all.

The girls all loved the pampering. Some were going to try and sleep as lightly as possible so their hair would last for the next day.

Here are the nail designs they had to choose from - strawberry nails, Hello Kitty nails, cupcake nails, panda bear nails, flowers, stripes, hearts and more!

 While some girls were getting their nails and hair done, the rest were playing games. One game, requested by Abby, was the ol' shaving cream-on-the-head game. Abby wears a shower cap (notice how cute it is) with an entire bottle of shaving cream on top of her head while the girls take turns throwing popcorn at her to see if they can get it to stick in the cream. Pretty funny!

Abby was such a good sport. 

The entire bowl was eventually thrown and this is how much stuck! We love this game and all the girls wanted to do it afterward. 

It was a little rainy that day so I put Abby just outside the conservatory door while the girls stood inside throwing popcorn at her. 

Blowing out the candles - check out all the hair-do's

We also painted bags, played some other games and watched "High School Musical." I think all in all, it was a success! When the mothers came to pick up the girls afterward they were all jealous. One funny thing I didn't mention was that only a few hours before the party started, I was in so much pain from my shoulder and neck, I could hardly move or breathe. I had been experiencing a lot of pain so I went to the Osteopath the day of the party (around 3pm - the party started at 6pm). The Osteo adjusted me and tried to relieve some of my pain but instead I could barely get off the table at her office. Fortunately with the help of a lot of Ibuprofen, I was feeling normal again around 5pm, just in time to get things rolling... ppphhhewwww!

Abby got baptized the following week. 

As you can see, Sammy is not in our little family picture after the baptism. Sammy got sick (I mean REALLY sick - vomiting everywhere) on Friday night. She was up vomiting every hour (it seemed) all night Friday and continuing into Saturday for most of the day. I was going on very little sleep, trying to clean my house for the little open house we had after the baptism, cleaning up after Sammy, washing sheets and blankets, caring for Sammy and generally being a stressed-out basket case! We eventually had to find someone to stay at the house with Sammy so we could go to the church. The open house was so stressful because Sammy decided she was better when she saw all her friends coming and immediately wanted me to give her a bath to wash off all the vomit. Meanwhile, some of the food still needed to be prepared, my house is filling up with people who are hungry and Charles is stuck at the church because I accidentally took the car keys when I got a ride home with someone else. It was sheer chaos but it worked out in the end. Everyone was fed, Sammy made a miraculous recovery, Abby had a lovely day and got spoiled rotten with gifts and I got the vomiting flu the following Monday!