Graduation Party

Ever since Stephen found Wild Kratts video games he's been addicted.  We wanted to get him away from that type of thing without him constantly begging us to play them.  We though that if we filled his desire for video games with an educational game - it would wein him off of high stimulation games and help him see the good purpose of games.  We found a really good website that wasn't arcade like (there's a lot that are) and followed as closely as possible to the math curriculum we had chosen.  We found IXL mathematics and we all love it!

We had promised the boys that if they did well on their IXL math games and finished up the grades they were working on, we’d give them a graduation party.  Well . . . Daddy is the one who promised, but I thought it was a great idea.  They both worked really hard.

Lincoln finished first about a week ago.  Stephen finished last night.  Stephen wanted to have the party immediately but after getting a "ride on daddy's neck" said he’d be ok to wait until “lunch tomorrow!”

That meant that I needed to plan a graduation party and plan it pretty quickly.  Luckily (or Provedentially), I bought a cake at the dollar store over a week ago as well as a disposable cake tin that would fit in our tiny oven.  We had a small bit of Cool Whip left over from Stephen’s birthday cake to frost it with.  I still had the bunting we used for Stephen’s party.  A cake, some decorations and two certificates … we should be fine. 

As the party time neared I thought I better bake that cake - my first cake in this little tiny oven.

 The only issue I ran into was that the heating element was too close to the top so the cake browned really fast but wasn't cooked all the way.  I put tin foil on top and prayed.  In the end - it came out great.  Who knew?

While I was whipping up the cake (by hand, mind you) Stephen casually asks me – "what about presents?  Are we going to get presents?"  Presents? Are you kidding me?  Leave it to Stephen to imagine this graduation party into something grandiose.

I didn’t have time to run out and get anything and I had nothing hidden away.  I didn’t know what to do about that one.  I told him that we just didn't have any presents - I wish I did.  Then I went to throw something away and saw that a box had been delivered.  It was from Melissa and Doug.  It was a few educational items for Alexander that were on sale.  When I opened the box, I remembered that I got some scissors and construction paper for the boys because they were super cheap and I was only a couple bucks away from free shipping.  Well construction paper and scissors makes for a great gift but that's not all.  There were also 2 free gifts that I didn’t know about: a coloring book and bubbles.  Perfect!!!  I wrapped them and the boys were thrilled! I came out and told Dan – Heavenly Father just sent presents for the boys :)

The night before I had cleaned out the pantry and found a cute banner in the garbage that says, “The Part is here!” so I pulled that out and put it up.  I pulled out the bunting we had used for Stephen's party.  It's super cute - they were only $1 at Target last summer.  So glad I bought them and brought them :)

When it came time for the ceremony.  I had the boys walk down the hall to the Wedding March because it sounded cool and they didn’t know what it was so they weren't embarrassed.

Dan was all dressed up for work so it made it more of a big deal when he presented each boy with their certificate.  Then we had cake and opened presents.  The party actually turned out pretty cute – I was surprised.  The boys were thrilled which was the whole point anyway. 

They sure are cute boys!