Meilani's Noah's Ark party: The animals came two by two

On Saturday, we celebrated Meilani's birthday with a Noah's Ark Theme. Appropriately, when we woke up on Saturday morning it was raining. Here was our chance to experience what Noah and his family endured for 40 days. Luckily, our sprinkles lasted only a few hours and stopped in time for the party. Meilani was also feeling a little under the weather but she perservered and welcomed all her friends.

Our swim party morphed into a patio party and we invented all kinds of creative diversions to keep the kids busy. Our friend Cori, who is the resident expert on toddler play, helped mix up a batch of blue flubber or "ooblek" (for you Seuss fans!).

Kamryn Schultz and Meliz McGowen were among the oldest of the party kids so they helped add the glitter and separate the flubber into plastic containers so each kid could take some home in their goodie bags with cookie cutters and the recipe. They had fun getting gooey and sticky.

We also had the kids paint these fun animal sun catchers. They were very creative with the paint. Meilani even got in on the action, making a sun catcher with Grandma Chris that looked like stained glass. Then we had lunch - complete with Meilani's favorite salmon with a tropical salsa, panini sandwiches, spinach dip in a turtle bowl and munchies like chocolate-covered peanuts and animal-shaped fruit kebobs. (Don't feed the animals!)

After lunch, we started the Noah's Ark-building contest. Each team got a loaf of cinnamon bread, some popsicle sticks and Noah figurines. Then they had blueberries, vanilla frosting, chocolate-covered sunflower seeds and almonds to decorate their very own arks.

Adam Abajian got very creative with his ark-building while his younger brother, James, was the royal taster. He had to check out the graham crackers to make sure they were up to par for building. Pass the frosting, please!

All the ark designs were winners but we especially liked this one designed by the McGowen kids. They used animal crackers to show the animals inside the ark with Noah and expertly built the walls so no water could get in.

We brought out Meilani's birthday cake, which was a cluster of organic chocolate cupcakes with two organic animal crackers and umbrellas to go with the Noah's Ark theme. Meilani blew out her candles and everyone dug into the dessert.

We made these goofy-looking chocolate-covered monkey pops and they were a big hit with the daddies especially.

Isaiah Tosland was a big fan of the chocolate-covered strawberries - yummy! (Wonder if they had those babies on Noah's Ark!)

Meilani opened some fun gifts - lots of art supplies, books, puzzles, pajamas and even kids' cookware - perfect stuff to bring to Virginia this summer.

Despite the weather and Meilani feeling a little droopy, the party went surprisingly well and we had a chance to celebrate year two of her life. We danced, ate like animals, put on our creative hats and even the mamas got to catch up a little bit.