What We Did for Our Daughter's Birthday

This year Nichole got a big birthday party where she got to invite friends and have lots of fun.
She wanted a Harry Potter theme so we went with it.  We had more planned than we had time for but I'll let you know what we did get to.

The kids got to make their own wands.  Jeremy prepared pieces of dowels.  The kids could then use hot glue guns (we figured this age group could be safe with hot glue- we wouldn't do this with 4-year olds) to create the handle, then paint the wand, add embellishments if they wanted (stick-on jewels), and later when it was dried they could wipe it with a shiny varnish.

We had Quibbler Mad Libs for the kids to fill out.

Jeremy set up a quidditch pitch with goals and the kids were able to play quidditch on brooms.

Of course there was birthday cake.  Jeremy baked it 'imself, words and all.

When he picked up candles at the store, he didn't realize they were the relighting kind.  It was pretty windy while we were trying to light the candles so we were having a really hard time getting them to stay lit in the first place.  Once Nichole blew them out, however, they wouldn't stay out.

Besides cake, we also had a potion to drink (dry ice root beer)

and after presents,

the kids ate Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and got to open their chocolate frogs and look at their wizard cards (homemade).

It was a good birthday party.