Silas' Birthday

Silas turned 12 on Sunday. He surprised me by asking for a decoration birthday. At our house the choices have been a decoration birthday- meaning you choose a theme and mom decorates for it or we can do a special family activity- like ice skating. Silas asked for a Narnia themed day. I wasn't sure I could pull it off.
Let me digress for a moment and talk about our family's view of the Chronicles of Narnia. I have good friends and family that will not read these books and I respect and even understand their reasons for this. For Steve and I, this series has a lot of meaning. I cannot listen to one of the audio versions or a movie and not weep. Every time I come in contact with this material, it brings me to my knees. We are not into the magic books and movies that have taken the youth culture by storm recently. Narnia fits with our family values because the witch is evil, there isn't a good witch. C.S. Lewis does liken the moving of the spirit as a deep magic. I can understand where that could be bothersome. If you aren't looking at the whole story as an analogy, it will be just a mythical story. We have great in depth discussions and studies with the children using the analogies in these books. It is my understanding the C.S. Lewis wanted to present an analogy of the kingdom of God, with a story that would engage children. I would never encourage someone to go against their convictions on this subject, I just wanted to give a reason for what our family does.
So, back to Silas' birthday. A visit to our local Goodwill turned into a treasure hunt, looking for decorating materials. We found perfect scraps of material, lots of "gold" ware and goblets for everyone. With half price items from there, we did this birthday for less than ones that had lots of disposable decorations. Steve took Silas out to for awhile and we went to work. It worked!! Silas was speechless when he walked in. All the children dressed up and it didn't take Silas long to get into character. I really enjoyed this, as I don't think my growing boy is going to be into dress up and pretend play much longer.


The grand desert table.
Yes, the grapes are real and they're all in one cluster. I've never had grapes come out of the bag that way until now.
The decorating crew.
( The coat of arms plaque was only 40 cents!)

The pretty ladies.

Sir Silas during our grand supper feast.

Philip drew Aslan on this bag and we put candy in it for a pinata.

It's been so long since I emptied our camera! Here are old photos.



Philip copied his dragon onto my white board.

This is the horse pinata Philip made for Abigail's birthday. Abigail chose to just have a quiet day at home for her birthday. She's our homebody.