Tess and Olivia's joint 12th party

I was hoping to get away with not having a party for Tess this year but it's the last year that Tess and Olivia can really have a joint one and their hearts were set on it so I gave in.  It also helped that Emma had a fantastic idea of doing a treasure hunt style party around Manly.  The girls were given fairy tale characters and each of them received a separate invitation with directions and clues applicable to their character.  Emma had 2 girls meeting in locations all around Manly, they put their clues together which told them where to walk to and who they were going to meet in that location.  The 4 girls then had to solve their clues to work out the next location where they met with another 4 girls.  At this location they met the Wicked Witch (me in one location, Emma in another) and were given a number of challenges to carry out - we did helium stick - placing a stick across the fingers of 4 girls lined up and getting them to bring it to the ground without stabilising the stick by bending their fingers, flying carpet - 6 girls on a blanket had to turn the blanket over completely without falling off the edge and Earthball where they had to keep a balloon in the air with each person hitting it only once.  The last activity was made a little more challenging by quite a strong wind!  We then fed them an ice cream and they finally had a crossword and another clue to solve which told them their final destination.  Once they all got to Little Manly they had great fun jumping off the wall and messing around in the water.  It was a great party and the girls seemed to really enjoy themselves.  

When the kids were younger we had a great book called "Billy Tibbles Moves Out".  It's about a cat called Billy Tibbles who has to share his bedroom with his baby brother but he doesn't think this is such a good idea so he tries lots of different places around the house such as the bath tub, the garage, the attic, until he finds out that it's quite good fun sharing with his brother.  Tess has been renamed Billy Tibbles because now that we have furniture in the house she keeps trying different places to sleep because she's fed up of sleeping in the small music room.  The shutters for the upstairs bedrooms were fitted last week and so this weekend we were finally able to move everyone back into their permanent bedrooms.  We're really beginning to feel like the house is nearly ready.  

It's been a very busy term which came straight off the back of a very busy holiday and poor Tess and Tom have not quite managed to recharge their batteries so I gave them both the day off school and we stayed home, baked and generally did not very much.  I love spending time at home with the 2 of them so it was just as much fun for me as for them.