Birthday Party Weekend

This weekend was a party weekend - a birthday party weekend, as our family happens to know two little girls born on the exact same day. Thankfully they had their parties on different days so we got to attend them both. However, that did make for a very busy weekend indeed. The funny thing was, they both decided on a lady bug theme, who'd have guessed?

Even though Jewell's theme was ladybug they still did a costume party so all the kids came dressed up. They thought this was great and had a blast. Even Yohn got in on the fun.

Superman!

Pictures of the kids in the gym are tough because of the lighting. I know this isn't the greatest picture but Bethany's face was so irresistible I still had to post it.

The kids played "musical leafs leaves" and Elisha won! Here's his victory pose.

They also played give the ladybug spots in which they had to toss as many bean bags on the lady bug as possible.

This game was the funniest one of all, Pin the Ladybug on the Leaf. Even though the kids were pointed in the right direction after they were spun around, many of them wandered aimlessly around the room before finding the wall way off course and pinning it far, far away from the leaf. Elisha was the first one to get "close".

Bethany came straight for me, then heard everyone laughing and turned around, then they all started saying I'm not the wall so she turned again. Then Jewell shouted, "That way Bethany!" and that is how Bethany became the second closest to the leaf (blurry photo, I know, but you weren't supposed to notice).

The birthday girl and her adorable cake.

Blowing out the candles (or candle, as the case may be).

If this isn't the look of total elation then I don't know what is. Can you tell she was very excited about this gift?

Oh no! There's monkeys on the loose at the party! Or maybe it's just Bethany in Daddy's mask.

Yes, I know I said we went to two parties, but I forgot my camera the second time so I have no cute pictures to post on that. I did however, learn two new party games which I thought I'd post here. I don't know if you want the ideas or not, but I'd sure like to know where to find them later should I choose to use them.

The Gift Pass: Take a prize and wrap it up with many, many layers of wrapping paper. Have all the kids sit in a circle and turn on some music. The kids pass the gifts from person to person like hot potato. When the music stops the child holding the gift gets to unwrap one layer. Keep going until you have a winner. You can play this more than once if you want to.

The Sock Race: For this game you will need many, many large clean socks. Put them all in a pile and have the children sit in front of them. At the party we were at they had only three kids race at a time. The kids pull off one shoe and one sock and set them to the side. The participants are then blindfolded and have to see how many socks they can pull on their foot all the way up in one minute. It's harder than it sounds, believe me. We had a good laugh over this game. Especially when the boys would take off the blindfold to discover they had some pink frilly sock on their foot. Hilarious.

Bethany managed to get six socks but didn't really hear when she was told to stop and pulled the sixth one on after time was up, little cheater. Elisha pulled on five but only go counted for four because he pulled two off at once. He was of course upset (in a brotherly way, not mad or anything) that Bethany had beaten him. Once we explained that they both really got four he was so much happier.