A birthday and some house lookers

First, I have to tell you, my house has never stayed so clean for so long nor smelled so much like "Pumpkin Spice Harvest" or "Black Cherry Crumble." In fact, I'm a little nervous about the health implications of having candles melted all the time. Am I going to wake up one morning feeling stiff and find that I have gained a fine covering of cherry-scented wax from head to toe? I'll have to warm the children up before they can get out of bed. (that idea sounds pretty good, actually) But I bet I could create some wicked cool hair-dos with that much wax! These are the things I've been pondering. We have had 4 lookers at our house and one came back for a second look tonight. Past that, we're still just sittin' tight. So while sitting, we celebrated Casey's 6th birthday on Monday the 15th. He had a pirate party and invited many little boys over. All together we had 11 children including our own and two cute cousins that stopped in for the fun. Casey and I drew up a pirate map invitation. Casey and Erika helped to color them in then we dipped them in Postum water to 'age' them and crumpled them up to look old when they were dry. Then we folded them up and sealed them with wax and delivered them to our friends houses. The kids were so excited to have a "real" treasure map! We played "dead man, dead man, come alive" and had dart throwing contests. We took a pirate adventure that had us climbing through caves (under the table) and swimming fast rivers (the hall) and fighting imaginary bad guys all over the place. It ended in the back yard with a hunt for treasure stones. The treasure stones looked more like, well, excrement than stones but the kids didn't seem to notice or mind. You can see how this would look sitting in the grass! ewwww. Everyone really had a great time. I taught the kids some pirate sayings like, "Shiver me timbers" and "Arrrrggg" and "Mateys" Casey went around for two days saying "Arrrrgg me timbers, Matey!"






Arrggghhin' it up for the camera!