Jack's 6th Birthday!

Hard to believe that Jack Thomas Daynes has already been alive for 6 years now!  

Shouldn't he still look like this? :)

It was definitely time for this boy to have a birthday party with friends invited.  He had a small party with a few families invited the year he turned 4 and another small one with our neighbors, the Stevens, the year he turned 3.  This year I felt like he deserved a great party so I broke my rule of birthday parties held "only at home" for him and let him have the party he'd dreamed of for the last 12 months...

a bowling party at a bowling alley.


Jack's birthday falls on the week school ends for summer so it's a pretty crazy time.  This year his birthday was actually on the last day of school.  That actually worked out great because school was finished early - at 11:30a.m. so the party was at 1:00 in the afternoon.

However, I'm getting ahead of myself.  First we had to do the traditional cupcakes at school with his class:

Jack W/ Good buddies: Max & Grant


Now, the party was set to begin:

I'm so grateful to have 2 cars b/c we were able to bring almost everyone to the party ourselves.  Zadian and his mom drove on their own b/c they live in Bukit Timah area.

                                    Everyone was a bit excited waiting for their turn to play.
                                        It was great that all of Jack's "besties" were there:

 Ava Stevens and Katie Lib. are Jack's 2 favorite girl friends.  Ava was due to move back to the U.S. in just a few days.

                                      Cute buddy Zadian was there with a smile on as always!

Grant Steigerwald was there; Jack's best buddy at school.

Bryant was there; Jack's best buddy in our Woodlands neighborhood.

These next 3 photos are of Jack's best friends in our house:

Big Brother Carson

Big sister Bailey

Big Sister Sammy

           Jack's siblings added an element of fun to the party.  I'm so glad they chose to be there to support Jack on his special day.
Not Pictured:  Skylar (she didn't make it due to an important nap she needed to have).
Not Pictured:  Mom & Dad - I promise that we were there! :)

Snacks, cupcakes and CapriSuns were enjoyed after the bowling game was over. 

Don't you love the look on Katie's face while Jack is blowing out his candle?

6 year olds are so fun!

This party was easy-peasy and we didn't have to clean up the mess! (Now I finally understand why many people choose to have parties outside of their home.)

Bailey's Capture The Flag/Scavenger Hunt Party

With 5 children in this fam., with 5 summer birthdays, we decided we'd celebrate Bailey & Jack's b-days with friends before summer travel to the U.S. and celebrate Carson & Sammy's b-days with friends when we return to Singapore.  (We will celebrate Skylar's with family in the U.S.)
So, Bailey's party was scheduled for Friday, May 25 from 7-10pm.

It was a Capture The Flag/Scavenger Hunt/Amazing Race/Water Fight/Swimming party.  Bailey invited 30 friends and 3 of them couldn't attend because they had a dance rehearsal that night.  The other 27 of them were there.  That number turned out great because that made 3 teams of 9 people each.  We sent out an e-mail with the list of teams to everyone a couple of days before the party so they could dress in that color.  The teams were Bailey's favorite colors: purple, orange and blue.  I even ordered personalized M&M's in her fave colors:

How cool is it to have an m&m with your face on it?

                                              The downtown kids all arrived by mini-bus

They arrived ready to play!

Weather was perfect that night...no rainstorms!

Mike was head referee.

Orange Team

Purple Team
Luc Bradford's sweatshirt looked a little bit warm for this party so we found him a purple shirt to wear.

Blue Team

Getting ready to play

Bailey hair flip

 

 The Capture the Flag games were played first, with Mike as the head referee.
Then it was onto the Amazing Race where each team had to complete 12 tasks in the neighborhood with the goal of being the first team to finish.

One of the tasks was to build a pyramid with your entire team in it:

Purple

Orange

Blue

 Another task was to have one member of your team eat one bite of durian (I had to watch them eat & swallow it.)

                                            Eli did a great job of chowing down his durian.

 Britta got the durian out of the garbage can so she could try some.  She didn't hate it.

Another task was to write YMCA with your entire team on the street.

There were extra points added for the team if each person jumped into the pool.  I think every team got their extra points.

With that many kids in our tiny pool we were concerned that there might be an accident.

 There was a pretty good one.  Nick got a bloody nose and a cut on his eye.  His friend Jacob was the one who wacked him (accidentally).

                                                                Bailey and Mady.

It's hard to believe that Bailey is 12.  She is so joyful to be around and she chooses fun friends.  Can't wait to see what the theme will be for next year's party!

Queen of TDT

Bailey is the Queen of TDT....THAT DANCE THING.  It's kinda like cotillion, kinda like etiquette class, kinda like ballroom dance classes, kinda like manners class...all rolled into one.  And the dancing partners are BOYS.

When Sammy did TDT she didn't really appreciate the social part of it.  Bailey is only there for the social part.

Bailey gets together with her friends before TDT to do what I used to do with my friends before school dances...we called it pre-funk.  Basically you meet at one of the girl's homes, eat some snacks, hang out and do each other's hair before you leave to drive to the American Club together for the event.

This is Bailey and her posse looking their best tonight over at her friend Amanda's house:

Here's some photos of the girls at the last TDT pre-funk party of their 6th grade year (last May):

TDT is only for middle-schoolers so Bailey has just begun her last two years of this program.  It's only once a month so she has many opportunities for dressing up ahead of her.  Her favorite months of TDT are the ones where Mike and I are the chaperones!  :)

Marathon Man

Mike has done a lot of races in his life but Saturday night, May 26 was his first marathon.  The marathon was originally supposed to start at 11:00pm but the time was changed to 12:30am so it actually ended up being on Sunday.  The name of the race is the Sundown Marathon. 

Sammy, Bailey and I decided to be superfans and stay up all night to cheer on dear old dad!  So, we left the house around 11:30 pm to meet the man of honor at the starting line of the race, which was down on Republic Avenue.  The problem with trying to meet him at the starting line turned out to be finding parking.  We tried a couple of carparks and quickly found out that they were closed for the night.  Then we tried parking on the streets but that was a joke b/c there was a 10K, 1/2 marathon and marathon going on which meant that 10,000 + people were down in that area.

So, we missed Mike at the starting line.  I was worried about missing him the next few places nearby so we got in the car and drove to the East Coast to catch him along there somewhere.  We camped out and watched for him.  We were happy to see him coming along so Sammy & Bailey ran along with him for a bit while I filmed.  Then Mike was too fast so they let him go and we waited for him to come back the other direction.  This time all three of us ran with him for a bit and Bailey played Rocky music with her i-touch and smiggle speaker as we ran along.  He got too fast for us again so we left and headed for the finish line.  Our intent was to run the last kilometer with him but it was roped off so we just waited at the finish line and tried hard to stay awake...since it was approaching 4:30am at this point.  We were totally PSYCHED when we saw the clock hit 3:58 and could see Mike heading for the Finish Line!  He finished his first marathon ever in under 4 hours!  Not bad!

There was rain for the last half of the race which was great and cut through some of the awful Singapore humidity a bit.  Stay tuned for many more races this next year for Mike, leading up to Ironman New Zealand on March 2, 2013.

Just finished!

Sammy & Bailey waiting to go home.  We were so wet and muddy.

Waiting at the finish line was tiring at 4:30am but it was worth it to see him finish so strong!