As if she didn't spend enough time in the water with her swim team practices, Natalie requested a pool party for her birthday. She invited 20 girls--no boys because, as she put it, if she invited boys, she would have to make sure more than one came, and basically, that would complicate things. We had originally planned on having the party on Saturday, but I made a mistake on the Evite invitations. We didn't realize until this past Tuesday, August 6th that I had made this mistake, when we went out to dinner with friends and they pointed it out to us. We already had a dozen girls reply "yes" by then, so we felt like we had to go ahead with the Friday party. Luckily, I had Thursday and Friday off, so I was able to do all of my prep stuff.
The party started at about 3pm. We weren't at the pool for more than about half an hour when Eric discovered that one of the pool lights was out of place with an exposed connection. The father of one of the girls was there. He works at the Natatorium where Natalie swims, and he advised that we get all of the girls out of the pool because of the possible electrical hazard. That is not what you want to hear when you've planned a pool party. We had eight girls by then. They all went into the baby pool instead, along with Eric, the brother of one of the girls, and another little girl who was probably about 3-years-old that was just there to enjoy the baby pool. I thought that no matter what, the girls would make their own fun, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun in the baby pool as the big pool.
There was another neighborhood resident there, and she suggested calling the guy who is in charge of our neighborhood pool. He came and checked out the light and told us it was safe to get back into the pool. He even got some tools and fixed that light so it would stay in place. Hooray--the party was saved!
Now, Natalie had invited two fairly distinct groups of girls to this party--her friends from club swimming and her friends from school and the neighborhood. They tended to split into their own group, so at one point, Patrick mixed them up to play a little game. We had gotten these "mini-water blasters (like water guns) for party favors and the girls used them to propel two beach balls across the pool to see who would get to the other side of the pool first. Patrick did a great job choosing the teams, because the contest ended up pretty much in a tie.
We brought bags of chips, water bottles, and juice boxes to the pool for the kids. The mother of one of the girls is functionally a single parent because her husband works in another city and only comes home every few months. She stayed to chat plus she brought her 8-year-old son. That was wonderful because then Eric had someone to play with too. Anthony and Alex actually came by the pool for a few minutes, but some of the girls made sounds like they didn't want any boys at the party. They weren't even in swimsuits anyway, so we packed up the birthday gifts and Anthony and Alex took them home with them.
This is the group photo I took of the 12 girls that played with Natalie at the pool. Even here you can see the six girls on the left are club swimming friends and the six girls on the right are school/neighborhood friends. We had two more come--one just as we were leaving the pool, and one when we got back to the house. We had planned on being at the pool for only about two hours, but the girls really didn't want to leave and we didn't get back until almost an hour later than planned.
The girls changed into dry clothes, then they all sat down in the living room while Anthony got the movie Despicable Movie going on the TV. I popped probably 7-10 bags of microwave popcorn during the first part of the movie and they kept asking for more. The girls got popcorn all over the living room. The girls all raved about the Minion marshmallows and wanted to eat them right away, but I made them wait until after they had pizza. They loved the marshmallows and the cupcakes--those were worth my time and effort, definitely.
The guests started leaving at 8pm and they were all gone by about 8:30pm, except for two of the guests, Aspen and Ally, who stayed for a sleepover. Natalie has never had a sleepover with them before, so this was important to her. Alex helped clean up the wrapping paper materials and popcorn on the floor so his sister could play with her friends. Anthony had helped a lot earlier. In all, Patrick and I thought this party went pretty smoothly. Natalie was very excited and happy the whole day. That's why we went through all of this trouble, after all.
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