Leaders of the Future

The rec. center, where my daughter takes gymnastics, has a summer camp program. As part of that program, they hire a number of counselors, and they also accept volunteer counselors-in-training that they refer to as, "Leaders of the Future." These are kids that devote their entire summer to working, without pay, in the hopes that the program will hire them for subsequent summers. My daughter's gymnastics class was assigned one of these Leaders of the Future, to help the teacher with the equipment and help the kids learn to do the moves properly. Since school starts back up this week, our Leader finished up the summer this past week, and we wanted to say thank you. So, we wrote her a nice little note and gave it to her, along with a gift card. She was very pleasantly surprised.

Just Because...

Part of the reason that I haven't been posting much lately is because I have just been enjoying the summer months with my little ones. We still try to incorporate good deeds into our everyday lives, but we don't always manage to capture them on film. Anyway, recently, I decided to have a party for my kids, for no reason at all. It may seem kind of silly, but I spent most of my life thinking that I wouldn't get to have kids, and I used to daydream about doing things like this. Plus, I'm hoping that by making my house a fun place to be when they're little that it will translate into them wanting to be around and share more when they're older (probably wishful thinking, but it's worth a shot).

The theme for the party came from Bakerella. I saw these cute little panda cupcakes and immediately thought of having a Kung-Fu Panda party (coincidentally, it's also one of my kids' favorite movies). The concept of the cupcakes was pretty simple. However, one of our guests can't have gluten, so I ended up using a gluten free cupcake mix, which tasted good but was a completely different consistency from other cupcakes. I struggled and struggled to get the chocolate chips to stick in the cupcakes, but the spongy cake kept rejecting them. I, somewhat unsuccessfully made two, but it just didn't seem to be worth the effort. So, eventually, I gave up and just threw some chocolate chips and sprinkles around the tops of the cupcakes and had a beer (Definitely made the right decision).

These were the take home bags for our guests. They weren't anything too exciting. They just had movie candy and some popcorn in them, but the kids LOVED them.

I didn't take a lot of pictures, because I was enjoying the company of the other moms, but the real question is did the kids enjoy themselves? Well...

I think my daughter's face says it all! Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and I think the moms appreciated the opportunity to let their kids play. We already have plans for two more "just because" parties.