Partying with Rachel

Out of all of us, I think Rachel is the biggest fan of Disney.  She would even love to work for them someday.  So it's no surprise that she wanted to go there on her birthday.  A bonus was having Shelby (our niece) and Esther's friend Kailyn join us.  The more the merrier I always say! A couple of new attractions for us was outside of the park in Downtown Disney where we found a Lego store.  Outside were Disney characters made completely from Legos.  Pretty amazing!  We also had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe where they sang Happy Birthday to the girls.

We rushed home to finish "fine tuning" our house for the "friend" party.  Rachel was the brains and the rest of us were the hands.  We did whatever it took to fulfill her vision.  Just like her 16th birthday, Rachel invited all of her friends to celebrate.  She is one of those people that just loves a crowd.  And I must say, she is very good at schmoozing.

Her party included a video of her life, games on the deck, Just Dance dancing, food (of course) including a cookie cake, and a fire pit with smores in the back.  She also put glow sticks inside of balloons for a cool effect, which worked until the boys started throwing the balloons over the fire so that they would burst.  One glow stick got in the fire and exploded all over a French exchange student who was visiting.  He was a pretty good sport about it, thankfully.

We also discovered that our house is a pretty good party house.  There was rooms for each activity and it all flowed pretty well.  Maybe we should do this more often? . . . probably not.

(Dad had obviously seen the movie before)

The Mormon kids were probably used to having parents at birthday parties, but I'm not sure Rachel's other friends knew what to think about Dad and I walking around the party the whole time.

As long as Rachel was fine with it, it doesn't matter, right?