Way Behind, Part 2

After the race, we ran a couple of errands and headed home to get some homework finished, since we had big plans for the evening.

You may recall that DD's birthday was about a month ago. However, for various scheduling reasons, we didn't have the party at that time. In the past few years, in fact, we had been avoiding the party thing because we had such a hard time getting girls to come to DD's parties, and I didn't want to see her heartbreak. We made up an excuse of "getting too old" to avoid the issue.

Well, this year, since the kids started in a new school, we figured it would be a good time to resurrect the party thing. There are only 10 girls in DD's class, which is a manageable number, so we decided to invite them all. It would give the girls a chance to socialize together, and me a chance to get to know the girls. Of the ten, all but 2 accepted. A couple of girls wanted to come so badly that their parents made special transportation arrangements.

Rather than have them all at our house (chaos!), or go to some run-around-like-crazy activity, we decided to have the girls do some service. There is an organization in our area which recruits volunteers of all ages to help pack nutritious meals for shipment oversees to starving children. The donated labor has made it possible for them to provide over 70 million meals in the past 5 years, at about 15 cents each, consisting of rice, soy protein, veggies, and a (vegetarian) chicken flavored vitamin mix. The girls had a blast (and looked great in those hair nets ;-)!

When we were done, we headed to a nearby pizza parlor for presents, pizza and cake. It was interesting to see the girls interact. DD is still obviously behind them socially, but most of them take it in stride. You can tell that some are more comfortable than others, but that is to be expected. It was wonderful to see her having such a great time, and be part of tre normal, giggly "girl stuff" that others enjoy. What a great group of girls!

We're going to do the same thing for DS's birthday in a couple of months (he only has 10 boys in his class). It will be interesting to see how a group of boys is different than the girls!