Nieces Sleepover!

It's 12:20 on Saturday afternoon, and just over an hour ago we finished a sleepover for seven of our ten nieces (the oldest couldn't come, and the two youngest are just a little too young to sleep over. Hopefully in a few years we can have all of them). I am about to go take a nap (not much sleep last night with seven giggling girls. :) But I've been working on a talk for church tomorrow, and thought I would upload pictures while I worked on my talk. This was such a fun sleepover, and I knew if I didn't do a post about it right away, I probably wouldn't do one. So, here goes (and, as usual, lots of pictures).

We started last night at 6:00. It was so fun to have our sweet girls over--they range in age from almost 7 to almost 4, and are so darling. We gathered them all around the table and had pizza. Here's a picture of dinner:

After we cleaned up from dinner, I talked to the girls about how special they are, and about how they are all daughters of Heavenly Father, and how because he is a King, they are all daughters of a King. When I asked what that made them, they all yelled out, "Princesses!" So, for our activity, they each got a name card with "daughter of a king" written under their name, and each got to make a crown. Here are some pictures of the crown making:

And here, in order of oldest to youngest, are our seven princesses. Aren't they so beautiful?!

And here are some pictures of our princesses out on our balcony, holding their name cards:

While we cleaned up from making the crowns, our little princesses ran around the living room screaming and doing ring around the rosies. It's a good thing we don't have any downstairs neighbors at the moment!

After the running around, we lined them all up on the counter to make cookies with Janice. They were so cute all there together, and had so much fun.

Finally, we put up three air matresses (and had to move our couch almost into the kitchen to fit them all), and after watching a movie, our princesses fell asleep. Well, technically, it took until about midnight before they all fell to sleep, but Jan stayed out and sang to them and told stories. After helping sing to them, I took my cat into my room and had to close the door so he woudn't go investigate all the little girlies while they slept--so neither Jan and I got much sleep. But it was for a good cause!

And finally, this morning we had waffles, watched the family video that Dave, Dan and Ems made for our 32nd birthday (because it stars our family, and so has most of their daddys in it. They loved it). Then they colored and we watched another video until their parents came.

I'm so grateful for my sweet nieces. They are such a gift to Jan and I, and help fill the void of our own children. What a blessing that they all live so close, and that they all love us so much. We had a great time.

Watch for three birthday posts this month, as well as a post next weekend about our nephew sleepover. It should be fun! Now I'm going to take a nap!