October 11 – “A Girl Party”

This afternoon I went from watching the Dallas Cowboys play an overtime pro football game to a six year old girl's birthday party.  Wow.  The football game came after we stopped at McAlister's Deli for lunch and were joined by some of the teenagers from church (and a Mom/driver).  After lunch the Mom had to rush to an appointment, so the kids all came to our house to watch the game.  One of the guys is a huge Cowboys fan, so it was kind of fun.  Especially when it looked like they were going to blow it.   When they left we had to hurry out of the house to get to the birthday party.  The little girl went to Seaside Christian Academy last year, and her parents are homeschooling her this year.  She doesn't have too many friends except from church, so we felt like we really needed to go.  Sure enough, there weren't many there.  It was at an outside pavilion and the weather was not very cooperative, so that had a lot to do with the small turnout, I'm sure.  But the girl was perfectly happy.   But this whole girl party thing was very weird.  Don't get me wrong.  Some parts of it were fine.  They had a Sponge Bob piñata that was filled with candy.  And candy is, after all, candy.  In fact they even had some body parts gummy candy – fingers, noses, ears, and even brains.  That was cool.  And the Dr. Peppers to drink were also great.    They had some of those small pumpkins for the kids to decorate.  Now that could have been fun.  You know, one-eyed pirates and creepy jack-o-lantern faces.  But this was a girl party.  They had glitter glue and feathers and beads.  The little girls all received a pink paper crown to wear.  The birthday girl's dad put one on, too.  That's when it really started to get noisy.  Not regular, run-of-the-mill, let's go nuts kind of party noisy.  This was a girl party.  They giggled.  And they squealed.    No actual birthday cake at this party.  See, the birthday girl helped make cupcakes for everyone.  But not just any cupcakes.  Red velvet cupcakes.  With green icing on top.  And cute little crowns.  I stuck with my Dr. Pepper.    Her presents were interesting, too.  Some of the things I had no idea what they were, other than they were obviously for girls.  She did get one battery powered toy.  Now how could a battery powered toy be all that bad?  This one was a plastic dog with floppy ears and swimming goggles.  It walked around in circles.  They said it can also swim.  Hence, the goggles.  OK.   They gave away a few trinkets to everyone.  One was a curly straw.  When the birthday girl handed me one, she said, "You can only drink water with it so it will last forever or else of you drink something else with it, it will clog up and get all sticky and you'll have to throw it away."  At least I think that's what she said.  I also received a necklace.  Hung around my neck by the birthday girl, herself.  Yep.  Purple beads hung about my neck for almost two hours this afternoon.    Chris made me some pancakes when we got home.  Now that's a great supper.  Maybe later I'll bite into a finger … or an ear. Colossians 3:16 says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God."   Father, thanks for giving me the chance to do a girl party today.  Now I won't be so horrified when we do stuff for Cailyn.  Amen.