Beach Birthday!

We ended up with the most perfect, sunny day for Hannah's birthday party down at the beach.  It was a little insane with 30 kids running around, but we all had fun and were happy to finally be celebrating a birthday outside, something we can never do in Boston with both kids having winter birthdays.

Thank you SO much to all of our family who sent money for us to get all the things that we didn't ship over here that the girls are missing (bikes, scooters, baby strollers, etc).  We let Abbey open her gifts early (it just seemed mean to make her wait another month for things we could be using every day right now in the beautiful Sydney summer).  The baby stroller is a HUGE hit, Abbey has not stopped pushing that thing around for one minute since she got it.

This could only happen in Australia!  Pete was filling water balloons for one of our party games and this animal was in the hose and ended up in the balloon.  Of course, he didn't even notice until Hannah saw the creature squirming around inside one of the balloons in his pile half an hour later.  How did he manage to tile the balloon without noticing that a live animal was inside it you ask? Welcome to my world :)

A rousing game of Duck, Duck, Goose after the water balloons ran out and everyone had eaten about 10 lbs of candy already (and that was before the piñata fiasco!)

Candy!!!

I told Hannah was should try to come up with some American-ized version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey and this is what she suggested.  Pin the Star on the American Flag.  Great idea, Hannah!  The kids loved it.

Not quite the masterpieces of previous years, but I managed to make cakes cobbled together with the hodgepodge of baking supplies I have here.

Hannah singing Happy Birthday to herself (of course)