Sophia helped make a lot of the food, including Grasshopper Pie and my famous raspberry cheesecake.
It's surprising just how many tasks I can give her to do to include her in a lot of the food prep. She ground up walnuts for the broccoli salad, added raisins and stirred the sauce for it. She mixed the lemonade and added all of the ice cubes herself. She also opened all of the tea bags for iced tea -- but I naively forgot to show her what I meant by "opening the tea bags." The first two bags ended up COMPLETELY open with tea all over the counter, when I really just meant to take them out of their paper wrappers!
Our guests arrived and we spent the first part of the "party" outside in the garage, while Steve fired up the grill and prepared the entre portion of our feast.
Jack and my dad did some extra bonding:
The highlight of our celebration though might just have been the "rocket" that Steve engineered with the girls the day before. I jokingly referred to it as our "7th grade science fair project," but all jokes aside, it is a pretty spectacular thing to witness:
The set-up:
Filling the bottle with water:
Water is optional, but it sure makes it even more fun to watch ...
Using a bicycle pump to build up the pressure:
Pump approximately 10 times and then pull the handle and watch the bottle soar into the air:
The girls put on a wonderful performance for us with the rocket, complete with introductions. When they asked for an assistant, Sophia chose Uncle Z to help. He gladly took over for Steve, and I am not sure who had more fun -- him or the girls.
Shortly thereafter, we retired back inside for dessert (and singing "happy birthday" to Papa). We lit the candles on one of the desserts and took a few pictures of Papa blowing out the candles with his grandchildren. So precious ...
Happy Birthday, Papa! We love you!
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