Yesterday I took Abigail and Sam to Abby's friends party. They both had soooooo much fun!!! I'm sure the party was supposed to finish after just a couple of hours but we ended up being there almost 5 hours! The children were all happily playing and the adults were just chatting away the whole time, and no one seemed in a hurry to leave!
There was a great Pinata that instead of being hit, you took it in turns to pull on a ribbon until one of the ribbons made the bottom fall out and then the candy bags all fell out!!! :) The children LOVED that :) hen they all went outside and sat under the trees and traded candy and treats and bubble jars and pencils with each other for HOURS it seemed lol.
Sam was playing with these huge foam swords wrapped in duct tape with the this huge group of boys and they were re-enacting some scene - boys of all ages but all including each other. Then he'd hang out inside for a while to cool off and play with the balloons or the toys and around the food ;) or with M who is a little younger than he is....or go check out where the group of girls had gone...
I had some really good, really deep conversations there with some of the Moms - about the way we raise our children, when overprotecting them oversteps the line of empowering them as individuals. And I also had a VERY interesting (and very disheartening) conversation with a British lady who I hadn't met before, about raising mixed race children in the United States. That conversation turned into an outright discussion on racism and raising mixed race children in general and about the US and Canada and their histories regarding black people and native people and how they are moving forward (or not). It gave me a lot of food for thought regarding our move to the US......
It was a great party, some great discussion, great company.
