Zeno's Bar & Grill

This weekend, I summitted yet another parenting mountain. It was challenging, yes. It required an entire team of sherpas to haul all of the necessary items. And, at times, I felt woozy from the oxygen deprivation. That's right, I hosted my first girls' slumber party chez moi!

The occasion was my oldest daughter's ninth birthday, and she invited six friends. Together with my three girls, that made for quite a full house, but we pushed all the living room furniture to the walls and turned it into a slumber paradise. Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, and they were asleep by 12:30, so that was good. I think it helped that we kept them busy. We made hand-cranked ice cream, had a treasure hunt, and the girls designed their own pillowcases with fabric markers and glitzy iron-ons, which they then autographed for each other. I felt like a PM (Perfect Mom^TM) for sure. Oh, yeah, except for the part where I flipped out when my husband decided to patch and repaint the front porch...30 minutes before the guests were supposed to be arriving. Um, yeah. Sometimes I think he missed the common sense gene.

The piece de resistance (if I do say so myself) was the birthday cake. Even though it didn't exactly look like a professional cake, the kids loved it. I got the idea from the internet and made this cake that looks like five little slumbering party girls (with their bodies made out of Twinkies.) Actually, purchasing my first box of Twinkies was another parenting landmark, but that's another story!