More on the Party (and the weekend)

...anyway, as I was saying, the party was really good. I think Sadie got a real kick out of getting to show her friends how well she rides. She went off lead immediately, and was just tooling around the ring, controlling the horse beautifully.

The kids seemed to love the riding, too. I'm so glad we went with a smaller crowd and let them each have a mini-lesson (20 minutes) as opposed to a bigger group of kids and only a single ride around the ring.

Overall, it was a pretty low-key event. When they first arrived, they painted pumpkins. Then, they rode. As soon as a child was done riding, they got their face painted (patting myself on the back for that idea). Once all the kids were done riding, we had cupcakes and fruit, and then they got a little tour of the farm and got to feed the ponies.

And then, magically, the two hours had passed and they all left. It took us about 10 minutes to clean up (basically just rolled up all the plates and stuff in the table cloth and threw it in the trash - so easy) and viola! Party over and done.

I will never do a party at home again. This was so much easier and less stressful.

So, as for the rest of the weekend...

Saturday, the girls went with Grammy and Grampy to the kids' service at temple, so we had about an hour of quiet to ourselves (bliss). We spent a good part of the day running errands and getting everything set for the party on Sunday. Then, we went over to Evan's parents' house to break the fast (ha! we didn't fast, but we sure stuffed our faces as though we did). It was nice to visit with everyone, and we ended up staying out way too late, so we had some sleepy girls yesterday morning. Poor Eden got shortchanged out of much of a nap, due to the timing of Sadie's party, so I had figured I'd get her to bed early last night. Well, we ended up inviting friends over for dinner last night, and the girls were running around like banshees until almost nine - again, a super late night for them. Of course, Eden isn't big (smart?) enough yet to actually sleep much later in the morning to make up the difference, so come 6:30, she was up, and none too happy about it.

Tonight, definitely, is going to be an early night for both of them!