The Party

So we had The Slumber Party. And for the most part it went very well. There ended up being 9 girls in all counting Morgan and Daisy, which ended up being the perfect number. 

The girls flipped over the zipper pouches and hair bows, and they had a blast making the bottle cap pins, glass stone magnets, tie dye shirts, and canvas bags. My mom had balloons and streamers, and a gorgeous food table set up. She got some great gifts (almost all of them One Direction themed, which was just fine with her!), and they had fun playing her One Direction trivia game.

The crafts stretched out until almost 2 AM, at which point we left the life center and went over to one of the Sunday School rooms for a photo shoot. Two of the guests were the granddaughters of a very sweet old man in our church who runs the video camera recording all the services. He also takes the pictures for our church directory, and he's had his backdrop and lights set up there at church for months. He very nicely gave me permission to use them to do a shoot with the girls, and they ate it up!

After the photo shoot I set them up with the first movie (I rented Parental Guidance and Diary of a Wimpy Kid). There was a small amount of drama surrounding one particular girl (we'll call her Allison). She had caused a little bit of an argument earlier in the evening too. Allison is a mostly latchkey kid. She's an only child, her mom and stepdad both work jobs that have frequent overnight shifts, and she spends a lot of nights alone in her house - not exactly an ideal situation for a 12 year old girl. 

She can be really abrasive and overbearing, but to me at least it seems fairly obvious that it comes from constantly searching for attention, and she really is a sweet kid underneath. A couple of months ago on the bus she tripped and landed on a boy sitting down. He shoved her, she shoved him back, and he punched her in the face and bloodied her nose! A boy did this! But the real outrage was that the bus driver didn't do anything at all other than to call the boy an idiot! For the next few weeks, every time she got on the bus, most of the kids would pull their shirts up over their faces, hiding their eyes from her "ugliness" until she would sit down and one of the little monsters would give the all clear. (This story honestly makes me angrier and angrier every time I think about it. It makes me think I could put a few of those paddles upstairs to some very good use!). Anyway, she finally reported it to the principal (since the bus driver wasn't doing anything about it), and Morgan went with her to sign a incident witness report. The school sent it to the police department as a bullying incident, and I don't think there's been a problem since. 

Anyway, Morgan is a friend to her, but she can be pretty hard to deal with sometimes, and Morgan didn't want to invite her to the party. I made it a very strong suggestion that she include her on the guest list, and despite the few random moments of friction, I'm glad we included her.

Saturday morning my mom let me sleep for a few hours while she made breakfast - chicken and biscuits and pancakes. When I got up we made the hair clips along with some door hangers my mom had come up with, and by then the parents had started to show up. That's when I started looking for my keys...

And looking, and looking, and looking! I couldn't find my keys anywhere! I finally had to call Nick to come and bring me a spare, and when he came we kept looking. We tore the place apart, even rooms we hadn't been in. We called the two girls who had already left and had them check their bags in case they had gotten scooped up by mistake, and we had all the girls still there go through their things. After 3 and 1/2 hours (!) of searching we gave up and finally had to admit that it looked like someone had taken them. 

I'll be perfectly honest, we all thought Allison had taken them. She didn't want to go home (she rode with me), and she was really the only one there who would have done such a thing. Also, in the course of looking for them, one of the other girls checked Allison's purse and found the phone charger that another girl was missing. (Of course it's entirely possible Allison thought it was hers and put it in there). On the way home I assured all the girls in the car (3 plus Daisy and Morgan) that if someone had taken them as a joke they wouldn't get in trouble, but I really needed them back. Just before I dropped them off I told them that if they came across them it would be great if they would just drop them in our mailbox.

Sunday at church we all looked again, but no luck. It was seriously stressing me out! There were keys to both of our vehicles, and the house, not to mention that $24 key chain I got spanked over!

Allison usually comes over in the mornings to wait for the bus with  Morgan, so I was hoping she would drop the keys in the mailbox when she came. But when I went to get the mail there was nothing there but bills. Then this afternoon my mom called. She was putting up some of the craft supplies she brought, and there in the bottom of the bag were my keys! 

Talk about relieved! And very glad that none of us had actually come out and accused Allison! Still, I called her and told her that we'd found them and thanked her for helping us all look on Saturday. :)

Anyway, that was our weekend. I hope yours was great!