An EXTREMEly Happy Birthday!

Coree planned her own thirteenth birthday party. Besides the requisite friends, this was her list:

(1) Monkeys
(2) Subway (shocker)
(3) Punchbowl full of candy
(4) Mint chocolate chip ice cream cake

That was the extent of the requirements. As a bonus, I offered to rid the house of boys. Dad's "business trip" took care of him...and I made arrangements for the other boys to stay with friends.

There's the punch bowl. It lasted 2 days. I figure, the faster it's out of the house, the better.

We went to Baskin Robbins to order the cake. They didn't have any monkeys in their designs. We were hoping for Curious George to go with the party goods. Instead, we just found a lion cake we liked, filled out the form and asked that they substitute a monkey for the lion. We knew we were taking a gamble...but it was kind of fun. This is what we got:



"The part of Curious George will be played by...Boots!"



In addition to everything mentioned above, as a bonus I arranged for it to rain buckets of water from the sky. This lent itself to extreme mountain boogie-boarding...and mud-wrestling. But before the girls went out to participate in such activities with some neighborhood friends...they needed to change as not to ruin their own clothes. They raided Patrick's closet and wore some of his instead. Here's some photos of the carnage:



The board stopped...Patrick kept on going.



LOVE the mud splatter on this one!



This one is even better, though!



Patrick almost got taken down by a Jensen twin.



This one was a little scary...they went off course and almost hit a fence. Doubling up caused too much speed.



And they head back up the hill. I wish my flash would have done the mountain justice. It's very steep.



And of course, Amanda the overachiever had to take the mountain backward and head first.







Dropping the birthday girl. Nice.



That's better.



We all headed home to get into some dry pj's.

OK...so these girls were a mess. grass stuck all over them...dripping wet. Most of my house is carpeted...so I brought out towels, had them hose off and head right into the kitchen and laundry room (hard floor) to change. After stripping down, some of the girls were hanging around in just towels and underwear in the hallway, waiting for their turn in the bathroom. I was on the house phone arranging to pick up some dry clothes for someone who lives in the neighborhood, when a text came through on my cell phone. It was from Troy. I was thinking it must have to do with his ride home (he was supposed to get one) or something.

It said:

"Help...I'm trapped in my room."

Fail! Troy had come home while we were "sledding" and was in his room changing and packing for his sleepover when we got home. This possibility never even occurred to me. I ran down the hall to inform the girls that Troy was in there and asked that they move to Coree's room so he could make his escape. They started squealing as they mentally recounted their conversations of the past 10 minutes...right outside of his door...of bra sizes and who likes what boy. Poor Troy! They were all shouting their apologies as they ran to Coree's room.



Then it was time for sandwiches and candy. Looks like Coree went for the candy!



Then it was time for presents...



And if there is crinkly paper involved...kitty wants to help. There might be treats in there!


I was exhausted (having had 3 hours of sleep the night before due to Cliff's 3 AM wakeup for his departure) and the girls wanted to watch "The Proposal" so I made a deal. I told them if they let me sleep during the movie, then they could wake me up to do the cake afterward. That two hours felt like ten minutes.




Coree loved her Boots cake. I guess a monkey is a monkey.



Isn't it cute?



Happy Birthday, sweet Coree!



Had to get an interior shot...doesn't it look yummy?

Then the girls decided to watch Twilight...and I headed back to bed.

Very few girls lasted till the 3 AM finish of the movie, and then...





At 5:30, the place started ROCKIN'!!!

I ran out to check on the girls, praying the concrete ceiling of the bunker would hold...I shouted, "Is everyone OK?" Only one of the girls was awake...the others woke, up though, as it was still going on...it lasted over a minute. Some of us stood in doorways, others laid on the floor...we didn't really know what to do. I heard some crashing in the back of the house. (One of Coree's screens fell out and a few of Jake's model planes dropped off the shelves...a big one broke.) Then it stopped.

We chatted for awhile about how big it was, one of the moms called to check on things, I got on Facebook to post something, and chuckled that so many of my Oki friends were doing the same thing. Then we went back to sleep.

Then, just after 8 AM, we were woken up by a doorbell-ringing little brother (not ours) because the power was out and he didn't know what to do. The outage had been scheduled (not related to the earthquake) and they had given us a window of hours...but I was SO hoping it would be on the later side, so we'd at least have time to make waffles. Nope. Practically 8 AM on the dot.



Instead, we had to suffer through more Subway and ice cream cake for breakfast. We didn't want it to melt, after all.

So, torrential rain, a 7-ish earthquake, and a power outage. Happy Birthday, Coree! I don't know how I'll top this one next year...but maybe I could arrange an off-season typhoon?