Girl's Sleepover

We had another sleepover with our darling nieces again this weekend, and so I thought I would break my blog silence to do a post about it.  I really do need to blog more often--hopefully this will be a long enough post to make up for not doing many posts this year.

I just love our sleepovers!  It is so fun to have all of our little ones here, to be able to spend time with each of them, do little activities with them, and have so much energy at our house.  I hope our neighbors will forgive us though.  It can get quite loud with so many little ones.  But they were all so good and so cute.  I just feel so grateful to have an abundance of nieces and nephews who all live so close to me.

We always try to do a fun activity to start our sleepovers (after pizza for dinner).  For this time, I found a really cute idea in The Friend magazine to help kids do a journal.  And, since I am such a journaler, I thought this would be a great time to get my little kiddies excited about doing journals.  My mom gave me a journal when I was about 7 1/2 years old.  It was just a notebook, but it got me in the habit of writing things down.  The notebook pages have long since come out, but I still have a few of them, and have them in sheet protectors in my Book of Remembrance.  So for our journal activity, I showed the girl's my journal I started when I was 7 1/2 (between Kate and Jenni's age).  I read them a few of the entries, and they liked hearing about their daddys, (although Jenni wanted to know why her mom, Michelle, wasn't in my journal.  I told her it was because Michelle wasn't born yet).  Here are some pictures of me telling them about my journal:

 

And, I thought it would be fun to put a page from my 7 year old journal in this blog post.  I didn't read this one to them, but I think it is so funny to read now:

It says,

"Jan 7, 1979, Sun" (My Dad's birthday, actually)

"Sometimes I think about what to write in my journal, and sometimes I wonder who I am going to mary and if I am going to get maryd" (then pictures of the Book of Mormon and the Bible).

I guess I've been wondering about that question for about 32 years now.  :)

Anyway, after I showed them my young journal, I showed them my 2007 journal in a binder (since I don't have my journals back yet that I am getting published--hopefully this week!)  Then I told them that we wanted to get each of them their own journals so that they could start writing.  I went to Wal-Mart and found 10 pink binders, and made a cover for each one, and then put the journal page from The Friend in the front.  The girls were so excited, and we had fun helping them to fill out their pages.  Here are some pictures of them with their journals:

Part of the page from The Friend asked about their weight and height, so we took some pictures of measuring and weighing them.  (FYI--Matthew wasn't really at the sleepover, but Ems stayed for a few minutes to help with the journal part since there are so many little girls that can't write yet). 

After they finished their front journal page, I took them each over for my traditional picture by the tree, holding their journals.  Rather than put all those pictures in here,  I put a compilation I made that night.  (I made a two page compilation of sleepover pictures which I printed out the next morning for each girl to put in their journals)

One cute thing about the journals--one of the pages I showed them from my journal was a page where I was praticing writing my numbers.  Janice said later, "Did you notice that a lot of the girls wrote numbers on their pages just like you?"  I thought that was so cute.  And, it was so fun to see what each of the girls wrote about their families and their favorite things.  Cute Holly, who is almost 12, wrote the sweetest things, and wrote an entry the next morning in her journal.  She was really excited about it.  Again, I hope this will help our girls (and our boys next week) get excited about keeping journals!

After the journal activity, we made cookies together.  I always love the pictures of all of them sitting on the counter (except Holly, who is too old--but she was invaluable to help us with all the little ones).  Here are some pictures of the cookie making: 

The last two pictures are of the girls decorating their cookies with an assortment of sprinkles and chocolate chips.  I don't know how Jan keeps them all straight, but somehow she does.  They usually eat one cookie that night, and she saves one for them in a baggie for the next day.

Finally we got them all on wall-to-wall air mattresses (with Holly on the couch), and put on Alladin.  After the movie, Jan and I laid down by them and told them stories and sang to them.  They actually did really well at falling asleep this time--and it was cute to hear their little voices singing Primary songs with us.  Here is a picture of them all getting ready to go to sleep (we had all but the littlest one, Mieka, sleep over, so had 9 girls plus Jan and I):

The next morning we had waffles (I ended up having to make three batches, so didn't get any pictures of the waffle eating), and them tried to sort out 9 different sleeping bags and clothes.  Then we watched the traditional birthday video their dad's made for us, and then their parents picked them up.  Again, I just feel so grateful that we get to have these sleepovers.  The girls seem to really love them, and Jan and I love getting to spend time with our sweet little girls.  We are so blessed to have so many little ones who love us. 

Well, as I said, this was a long post.  Watch for another one next week after our nephews sleepover!