So the tradition has been made, every kid gets one slumber party during their childhood career. 🙂 But you have to be at least 8 years old, to prevent tantrums and kids wanting to go home in the middle of the night. Sophie could hardly wait for it to be her turn. She helped me make the invitations during summer vacation, so they would be all ready to hand out the first day of school. As usual, we invited all the girls in her class, thinking that a few would not be able to make it, or want to spend the night. That is how it was with Sarah’s party. Apparently Sophie runs around with a different crowd. Only one girl couldn’t make it, and every single one of the 7 other girls spent the night. That made 9 little girls in one bedroom. But I am getting ahead of myself.
They arrived promptly at 6 and I let them run around and play for a bit while I put the final ingredients together for dinner. We were having a family favorite; pizza cooked in the raclette machine. I set out all the different toppings on plates and in bowls, and passed out blobs of dough for the girls to make the crust. Through trial and error, we have learned that less dough is best to ensure a quick cooking time, and setting the trays on top of the grill halfway through helps the crust crisp on the bottom.
When they had had their fill of pizza and veggies, I had them go get their jammies on and meet back in the living room for games and presents. Even though it was a slumber party, Sophie still wanted a theme for the party, so she chose dolphins. I was a bit overwhelmed at first, because that seemed a bit above my skill level, but I managed to pull it off to her satisfaction. Papa printed out a dolphin picture I found on the internet, and we spiced it up with some glitter stickers and put it on the treat bags. 
We also found dolphin pencils, and some tiny dolphin ceramic figures to spice up the bags. 
She only wanted one game, as we were also watching a movie, so we played “Put the dolphin through the Jump ring”.  The dolphins ended up in some very funny places, and she loved the glitter paint I used to color them. So that was a success.
We did have one iffy situation crop up. One of the girls lost her father 18 months ago to a heart attack and is still recovering from the loss, naturally. Having Sophie be the center of attention, was too hard for her, so she went and sulked in the bedroom while we finished dinner. When I tried to get everyone to come play the game, only half of them showed up. S. had gotten them all worked up while they were putting on pajamas, telling them her horse had escaped from the corral, and she needed their help to go out and find it. She even orchestrated a fake phone call with the owner of the corral, which I heard from the hallway. Of course, the girls didn’t know it was fake, they bought it hook, line and sinker and were all upset that I wasn’t letting them go out in the dark, in their pajamas, to look for the horse! Reason didn’t work either. She tried to say the horse had escaped from the corral right across the street from us. And yes, it’s true there are no horses there, but that’s because they are tearing down the barn and building an apartment complex there. There haven’t been horses stabled there for months. I explained that to the girls, and it helped some, but there were still two girls completely worked up, practically in hysterics. Naturally, this made Sophie very sad. It was supposed to be her birthday party, and these girls were ruining it. So I put on my stern face and said “We are here to celebrate Sophie’s birthday. If you want to forget about the horse, and join us, wonderful. If not, I will call your parents and you can go home and worry about the horse there.” That stopped them dead in their tracks, which just confirmed to me that it had all been an act, and the party continued on with no further problems. Whew!
We used Alexandra’s stuffed dolphin to help us determine whose present Sophie would open. 
Whoever had had their present opened last, would spin the dolphin to choose the next girl whose present would get opened. 
I really like using that method. Seems to cut down on the chaos that only a present avalanche can induce.
After presents it was time for cake! This had been a real concern of mine. I don’t have any dolphin-shaped cake tins, and some of the instructions I found on the internet to cut out your own required giant sheet cakes, which I also don’t have. I saw one idea to form dolphins out of rice krispy treats, but I didn’t have rice krispies, either and was trying to avoid running to the store, because I was running short on time. The cake itself was a piece of, well, cake! I used a recipe for strawberry cupcakes I found on the Martha Stewart site, and just doubled it for two cake rounds. So delicious! Sophie loved it. Anyway, I at first considered using a couple of the girls’ smaller stuffed dolphins and some wooden skewers to make it look like the dolphins were jumping out of the water. But they looked very odd and, quite honestly, dirty from being attached to their school backpacks. Not very appetizing. Finally Noah had a brilliant suggestion. We could use the Playmobil dolphins. Yes! I had completely forgotten we had them. Who could blame me, with all the Playmobil we have upstairs. So all the kids ran all over the house to collect all dolphns and other sea life we had in Playmobil form. And then we stuck them on the cake. 
It looked pretty good, and Sophie was very happy. Hurray! 
Sophie’s friends were a little wary of the blue frosting, as I knew they would be, but they all did at least try it. And like I said, the cake itself was very good, so that helped win them over.
I had no illusions about getting 9 hopped-up-on-sugar little girls to bed anytime soon, so after they had all brushed their teeth, I let them vote on a movie to watch. Sophie and I had gone to the library and checked out several dvd’s we thought they would like, and that I thought were appropriate. We had several of them at home already, but in English, and this was a German party. 🙂 The girls chose Nim’s Island, which went very nicely with our dolphin theme. I let them watch more than half of it, at which time it was close to 10 o’clock, so I turned it off and promised them they could watch the rest in the morning. 
Of course they didn’t go right to bed, I wasn’t expecting them to. But by 11:30, I was getting really tired and needed to go to sleep myself. Half of them were asleep actually, but a group of about 4 girls, with my daughter Sarah as the ringleader, were still wide awake, and walking around the room. I put my stern face back on and got them in bed for the final time. Of course, I went to bed myself and fell right asleep, so I have no way of knowing if, or when, they finally did conk out. As long as I couldn’t hear them anymore, I didn’t really care. 🙂
The next morning they were up by 8, and finished watching the movie while I got breakfast ready.
Sophie had requested Zopf and a fruit tray. And of course, chocolate milk makes any breakfast special. 
As big as our table gets, these two were still banished to the kitchen to eat. I thought it would be better to keep the party goers separate from the house dwellers. 🙂
The girls had just enough time to eat and get dressed before the first mommies started to arrive. Well, to be completely accurate, ALL the mommies arrived at the exact same time. Swiss women are nothing if not prompt. 🙂 There was quite a loud crowd in our stairway for a bit, and a lot of running around collecting forgotten items. But eventually everything was found and our house was blessedly quiet again. Happy birthday, Miss Oreo Filling!