Micah's Party

Absolutely beautiful spring day, and maybe our best birthday party ever.  Went super-smoothly with all the helpers I had.  Micah loved it!  He SO looked forward to this day, and I believe it met his expectations. 

Micah and Claire decorated our front door.  Claire also prepared the treat bags for the guests and did lots of odds and ends to get ready.

It was a jungle animal themed party.  Here the kids are coloring animal masks.

We invited Micah's whole kindergarten class (13).  6 guests came, so including Micah we had 7.

2 of the parents stayed for the whole time-- chatting and visiting and enjoying the weather.

Anita planned a relay game in the backyard-- pretending to be elephants with circus peanuts and monkeys with cute mini bananas

Katie spread out 400 pennies in the side yard so the kids had a penny hunt.  This was definitely a hit.  Thanks for the idea, Brenda! :)  The benefits of this game-- didn't cost much, didn't take much planning, and it could have been done inside if the weather was nasty.

The girls found a stray daffodil growing in the woods-- where I dumped a bunch of extra bulbs last year.

Fun with the lion cake.  Made a nice centerpiece, too.

The boy in the pic below is Ayush.  His parents own several Dunkin Donuts and Burger Kings.  They couldn't give him a ride, so Chad and Micah went to pick him up.  This worked out great, too-- Micah was so excited before the party that it was really good to get him out of the house so I could finish the cake, etc!

The gift opening was a bit chaotic.  (Maybe that's why kids don't always open their gifts at their party any more?)  But the kids sure liked seeing Micah open the gift they brought-- and he loved them all.  Now he's having fun playing with each of the gifts.

Here he got a giant stuffed Mario.  Also some number games, some planes, a bath toy with racing cars (now he's very excited about taking baths), art supplies, Mario gummies, poster, soccer ball.

At the end of the party, I had planned that we'd go outside and use sidewalk chalk.  However, it was so nice out, the kids just wanted to play on our playset.  That sure has gotten a lot of use over the years!  I remember the many hours of work Chad put into assembling it back when Claire was a baby!