A Mutinous Birthday for Lizzie

Welcome to Lizzie's 11th Birthday Party! It's a Mystery, Pirate Style.

If you dare to enter, you must walk the plank.

This is what the last Party Host looks like now:

Some of the snacks included Peg Legs (carrots), Octopus legs (Gummy Worms), Goldfish, Pirate's Teeth (yellow corn), Golden Nuggets (Hershey's nugget candies), and our favorite, Jellied Ocean with sunken treasure (blue Jello with diced peaches).

The Birthday "cake"

Now, let's introduce the characters: The notorious Captain Unibrow Petra (played by the Fantastic Alyssa Pike!)

Swashbuckler Sam (The Birthday Girl!)

Hook-Handed Holly (Nicolette)

Clam Bait (Eric)

Sleep Simon (Kaley) - love the beard!!

Nauseas Nikki (Audrey)

Kemo Swabby (Ashley)

Peg-Leg Chester (Jacob)

One-Eyed Wally (Ryan)

Pan-Head Pat (aka Sarah)

Toothless Terry (aka Sarah)

Mud, the Cook (aka Chris)

The Entire Crew

Now one of these innocent-looking underlings threw Capt. Unibrow overboard. Luckily, she was saved, and now she wants to know WHODUNNIT! Through 6 rounds of clues, the motives and suspicions unfolded.

Time to break for pirate snacks and swashbuckling practice.

ATTACK!

Awaiting their turn on deck...

The swarthy mates

Look out, Lizzie!

Now it's time to find out who the overboard-throwing buccaneers were!! It coulda been her. (Kemo Swabby)

Mighta been him. (Clam Bait)

Or Peg Leg Chester, or maybe Swashbuckler Sam...

Definitely could have been One-Eyed Wally...

In the end, it was 3 villianous Pirates - Nauseas Nikki (Audrey), Sleepy Simon (Kaley), and Toothless Terry (Sarah). BUT they decided to all commit mutiny and make the scurvy Captain Unibrow Petra WALK THAT PLANK!

To the Fathoms below!

Hooray! Naught but her bandanna is left now...

I guess the Captain can't have ALL the fun! Happy Birthday Lizzie!

Birthday Twins!

Lizzie is a Birthday Twin with her Grandma Vickie. How fun that they got to spend time together this year!

After properly celebrating,

including very cool presents for Lizzie of a Hedwig puppet owl (thanks G&G!), and a t-shirt that sums up her feelings about math precisely ("Dear Math, I am not a therapist. Solve your own problems."),

we went to the Phoenix Zoo.

We saw some exotic animals,

but the favorite of the day was a beautiful, friendly, white horse from the Petting Zoo.

The splash playground at the zoo was a hit!

We were so excited that Uncle Mark could come visit as well! He and Ivy got along swimmingly. Mark caught up on all uncle duties such as laughing every time Ivy said the word "stinkin'" and teaching her how to fake crack her nose and fake separate her thumb. She's now a walking carnival. Here they are in a rare calm moment, composing a silly letter to Adam, complete with 6 lines of exclamation points.

All good things must come to an end, and Ivy ended the visit by opening up a grocery store in the hallway. We all bought our plastic food obligingly, and Ivy was very good about bagging our groceries and giving us change. :)

Thank you for visiting, Vickie, Alan and Mark!!! What fun!