Sleepover Party

Ruby celebrated her tenth birthday by having 5 friends sleep over for the night. We played the 'middle childhood' version of party games: the chocolate game - roll a six and then put on gloves, hat, scarf, cut up pieces of chocolate with a knife and fork and try to get them into your mouth before someone else rolls a six; the 'life saver game' - pass a life saver from person to person via toothpicks held in your mouth and so on. We went for a walk, and ran around the park and had a treasure hunt with rhyming clues. We watched a movie (The Parent Trap- Lindsay Lohan is good!) and had the now traditional icecream cake. Each year these get more and more slapdash but when it's good quality ice-cream with Cherry Ripes and Violet Crumbles chopped up inside and covered in marshmallows, no one really cares how imperfect the shape of the '10' is. It was all lovely but by collection time the next morning I was well and truly over it and may have been less than subtle in hastening the departure of the final guests. Still, you only turn ten once, and a decade does feel like a milestone. I've promised the other girls a sleepover party for their 10th and I reckon I'll need about 2 years in between each one to recover.