Kaitlyn's Surprise Party

Kaitlyn and Grandma

Kaitlyn turned 16 on Friday (May 13), and we wanted to throw her a party. But we also wanted it to be a surprise, so Karissa made the invitations one morning when Mom took Kaitlyn out for her piano lesson a couple weeks ago. We just invited a few girls from church who are close to Kaitlyn. So this week (on Friday) Mom took Kaitlyn to Oakland for a hair cut, piano lesson, to see Grandma Fitzwater, and a lot of miscellaneous errands! Right when pulled out the drive way, we started cleaning the house and getting a few decorations and food items together. 

Elizabeth King's mom dropped her off and Bro. John dropped the Jones girls off, so there weren't even any cars here to give away the surprise when Mom and Kaitlyn got home!

 

 Elizabeth's Mom, Mrs. Cathy King, brought the balloons for us. We really couldn't think of a way to get balloons ourselves without making Kaitlyn suspicious.

This balloon is from Abigail, JoAnna, and Priscilla Jones :)

Karissa did all the decorating! 

And she was very surprised when she finally came in! At first she just saw all the balloons and stuff on the table, but she still didn't suspect anything! She just thought Karissa did that for her! Then we all yelled "Surprise!" and she still only saw Karissa, Katrina and I! The other girls were standing to the side of the fridge of and Kaitlyn couldn't tell where all the voices were coming from!

When she finally saw all the other girls, she was like, "Oh my goodness! Where do you all come from!!!!!!????!!!!!!"
The big balloon Kaitlyn has in this picture is from Grandma. If you tap it, it sings Happy Birthday!


So the first thing we did was... eat! Karissa made taco salad earlier... which is another thing Kaitlyn didn't pick up on! Karissa browned 3 pounds of hamburger (our family never eats 3 pounds of hamburger!!)

 And then Karissa had a couple of games; three, actually.
The first one was just a piece of paper with "Kaitlyn Marie Wagner" at the top. You just used the letters in her name to make as many words as you could. I love word games!

 The second game was a word scramble which, apparently, Karissa is very good at making!! She had about 19 different "girly words" scrambled. She did things like hair dryer, makeup, bangs, sandals, skirt, manicure, et cetera! A bunch of the girls had a pretty hard time figuring out what some of those words were!

 Abigail, Kaitlyn, Priscilla, and Elizabeth
Playing a game :)

 (around the table starting at the far end going right):
Abigail, Kaitlyn, Elizabeth, Katrina, Me, JoAnna

 Still playing games :)

 Kaitlyn, Priscilla, and Elizabeth trying to unscramble those words!

 The birthday girl

 So, I guess I got the most words in the word game (about 50 I think)

 And Abigail was the first to unscramble all her words!

Me, Kaitlyn, JoAnna, and Abigail

After games, we watched a movie....

Tara, Jack, Bobby, Levi, Sue, Lucy, Dimitrius, Myles

 ...which just happened to be "Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye"! No it didn't "just happen". Mom planned it that way. This season (season 5) is the last season, so we saved it, so Kaitlyn would have something new to watch on her birthday! That afternoon, Mom let Kaitlyn stop and rent a movie for that evening (I think she ended up choosing "Prince of Persia") so she wouldn't suspect anything else was planned for the evening!

 One Sue Thomas episode is only about 45 minutes long, so we had Kaitlyn open her presents after the movie was done.

These bracelets are from Elizabeth. She made both of them! She's very talented when it comes to fixing and making jewelry... and she's got good taste!

Karissa got her a teal, green, and white striped shirt and white flip-flops! And I gave her nail polish (because Dad said his girls have to be 16 before they can paint their nails), nail polish remover, a nail file (that also has a buffer) and bag to keep it all in :)
Abigail, JoAnna, and 'Cilla gave her money!!! Yay! She can go shopping!!!!

This is the cake Kaitlyn wanted: a trifle. 

Kaitlyn and Elizabeth

But she also really wanted chocolate covered strawberries. But that's another we couldn't figure out how to do ourselves and still keep it a secret, so Mom gave Mrs. Cathy (Elizabeth's mom) money for supplies and Mrs. Cathy and Elizabeth made them for us! Everyone raved about them! They were so delicious!!!!

A beautiful dessert! 

So happy :-}

Abigail (19), Katrina (11), JoAnna (16), Elizabeth (13), Kaitlyn (16), me (18), Karissa (20), and Priscilla (14)

After we finished eating the trifle and most of the strawberries, we were just sorta sitting around talking and playing with the nail polish in the center piece. Karissa said she heard of this game where a bunch of girls sit in a circle, someone spins a thing of nail polish, and whoever it's pointing at when it stops spinning gets one of her nails painted! So all the girls were like, That sounds fun. Lets play that!! 
So we did!! For the rest of the evening (we only went 'til 10)

I think JoAnna ended up with the most nails painted... she had 5 or 6 or something. 

But after a while we just starting playing around with it!

We wound up with some pretty crazy designs! Some were described a "chicken pox", "lady bug", "flames", and "lips"!!

Elizabeth did a watermelon for Abigail. After we were done with the game, right before we left to take the girls to meet their dads, Elizabeth asked me to do all her fingers in watermelons! I did my toes like watermelons several times last summer :) So Karissa painted her fingers pink, I tipped them in green and gave her some little black seeds!!

Kaitlyn's first day painting nails! She's getting the hang of it :)

JoAnna doing Kaitlyn's! 

JoAnna doing Katrina's

Katrina painting JoAnna's nails

Abigail doing Karissa's!

Abigail doing me! This was the flame job!! She is so artistic... it actually looked like flames!!!! I had already painted my nails red (all the nail polish we used was mine! I didn't realize I had so much :} ) so she used an orangish color for the flames!  Later she did a really cute argyle design on herself! 

The finished products!!!

Mom took the picture for us! 
We had lot of fun!
And best of all....
Kaitlyn was really surprised!!!!!

North Carolina

Several months ago, Karissa found out there was a gluten-free expo in Charlotte, NC. 

Aunt Bonnie said she would love to go with her, so Karissa registered herself, Mom, and Kaitlyn for the expo! 

The expo was on April 29, so Dad decided to make a long weekend out of it. We left early on Thursday (April 28) and stayed until Monday (May 2). 

We stopped over in Wythville on the way to see some friends of Mom and Dad's. They made lunch for us and we visited with them for a couple hours. We probably got to Uncle Paul's house around 4 o'clock or somewhere around there. Shortly after that Aunt Bonnie came, and then Amber and Evan, then Aaron, and Uncle Bob! Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Paul always fix great big, very yummy meals when we're down there :)

Mom, Aunt Bonnie, Karissa, and Kaitlyn left for the expo around 8 or 8:30 Saturday morning and didn't get back till probably close to 5:00. They knew there would be vendors, samples, classes, and information, but didn't realize it would be as massive as it actually was. It was in a great big hotel, and Mom said there were simply tons of samples, that there were people there with Ziploc baggies and Tupperware containers to hold all the samples! They didn't eat lunch and they still weren't hungry for supper when they got home because of all the samples they ate. Mom and Kaitlyn both said that Karissa's food is better than most of the stuff they tasted at the expo.  

They also attended a cooking show by a lady (Jules) that Karissa gets regular emails from. They had a drawing at the end of the show for one of the cake batters Jules made and Kaitlyn won it! :-) At the last cooking show Kaitlyn went to (a Taste of Home one a long time ago!) she won a toaster oven!!!

This is Jules, by the way!!!

Jules and Aunt Bonnie

Karissa and Jules and Aunt Bonnie

Jules signing Karissa's recipe. She gave out recipes of everything she demonstrated on stage. 

She made biscuits, pop-tarts, gram crackers, and cake.  

That evening, we had a cook out at Uncle Paul's house. Uncle Paul grilled hamburgers and big, sweet onions and brats. 

In the picture are Jatana, Aunt Bonnie, Katrina, and Uncle Bob. 

Jatana is Uncle Paul's girlfriend... doesn't she have a beautiful name! I just love it!!! I think it's so pretty :) Plus, I've never heard it before and I really unique names!!! 

There's this game they play down South that they call "cornhole". So Dad and Uncle Paul made a team and Kaleb and Aaron made a team and they played until well after dark Saturday night! The point is to get the bean bags either on the board or in the hole... you get more points by getting it in the hole. 

Katrina, Aaron, and Uncle Paul... still playing cornhole!!

Karissa and Kaitlyn got matching shirts earlier in the afternoon.

Kaitlyn, Karissa, and I playing Phase 10.  

On Sunday... they took the cornhole boards to Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Bob's house because went went back there for lunch after church.  

Amber gave me some very helpful lists for my MT courses. She took the classes before me and is a working medical transcriptionist now! So she had tons of helpful hints and advice! 

Karissa and Evan (Amber and Philip's little boy)

Little Evan Henry... isn't so little anymore!

Awwwww!

Monday morning, we ate breakfast with Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Paul at Cracker Barrel! Oh So Yummy :)

Thank you so much Aunt Bonnie .... for everything!!!!!!!

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