Happy 7th Birthday, Kathryn!: The Party Edition

Ama and Ampa arrived on Friday to attend Kathryn's birthday party extravaganza on Saturday. She chose a jungle/safari theme this year so I worked on the cake while Nate set up "Kathryn's Safari Adventure" in the basement. Kathryn and I had perused a cake website and found a few neat ideas, including a hill with a waterfall and lots of animals. Turns out, my kids love animals so it wasn't hard to find plenty of small, plastic jungle animals to adorn the cake. I did the foundation work and Kathryn put the trees, animals and candles where she saw fit. I'd say it turned out pretty well, what do you think?

I especially enjoyed jamming the hippos into the cake and covering them with "water". This is an awful picture, but it's easier to see them here:

Nate spent a lot of time transforming the basement into a jungle, complete with surround-sound effects, lush greenery (mostly compliments of Michael's and which he gathered from just about every room in the house) and wild animals (our children...HA!). Actually, we gathered all the jungle animals we could find from small plastic ones all the way through the large stuffed variety. Nate hid them and I gave a note to each guest welcoming them to Kathryn's Safari Adventure and listing different animals they needed to find on their safari. They were each issued a Pith hat, binoculars and a keychain flashlight to aid their search. We turned the lights off and had the jungle sounds on and boy, did they have a good time. It was a lot of fun and I think their guide (Mr. Nate) enjoyed himself the most. They were so excited to deliver the animals back to me at the Outpost and once they were finished, they helped others. What a fun activity! Here are the Safari Adventurers:

(Top row) Abby, Kathryn, Delaney, Julian
(Bottom row) Alexandra, Juliana, Alexander

After the safari, the kids played Animal Charades. Kathryn wrote out all the animals and drew pictures next to each one about 2 weeks ago. She thought of so many different animals, they had enough to play about 5 rounds. Then, it was time for cake.

Make a wish! Extra credit to whomever can identify the 6 animal candles on
the cake. The #7 on the top is pretty obvious.

Alexander liked the cake, too.

I'm including this picture so you can see the cool animal print balloons. There were a ton of them and they really looked great. Somehow, the kids got a hold of some uninflated balloons and had them in their mouths for the better part of the post-safari festivities. I didn't mind too much then, but looking at the pictures now makes me want to gag so I'll spare you.

Kathryn got 2 Webkinz Beagles (what are the odds?!) and deemed them twins, naming them Fudge and Mudge. They join big brother, Spot. Can you guess which one he is? :) Juliana found it extremely UNFAIR that Kathryn has 3 Webkinz and she only has one. Are you aware of the gross injustices perpetrated on 4 1/2 year olds? Nothing is fair...ever.

Fudge joins the family and Kathryn couldn't be more tickled with her gift from Ama and Ampa (even though it's a duplicate!) :)

She got some lovely gifts from her friends and grandparents. As always, Ama and Ampa were a huge help (I did far fewer dishes than usual and there would be no balloons without Ampa!) and she was so glad they visited to share her special day. It was a great birthday celebration.

For her actual birthday, she took cream filled chocolate cake cookie things with pink icing drizzled on top to school. I much prefer to make something for her to take to school, but my back has bothered me since Monday and I wasn't up for it so we hit Wal-Mart and voila! She said they were great and everyone enjoyed them. Easy peasy; that's my kind of treat. She had a substitute teacher for the day and I was worried that her birthday would be largely overlooked. I was pleased to find that wasn't the case and that she actually had more perks from the sub who let her sit in the teacher's chair, made her a birthday crown to wear and let her do many other little things that her teacher doesn't do for birthdays. I was very happy with the special treatment she received! Along with the store-bought school snack, my day was further made easy by Kathryn's Special Birthday Dinner request: pizza. Shocking, I know. We decided on brownie sundaes for dessert since we were kinda caked out after the weekend and I managed to make them for the occasion. I told her we could do brownies, ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and a cherry and she added with glee, "And, M&M's!", to which I replied, "And, M&M's!" Of course, how could I have forgotten the M&M's? We sang to her again with her #7 candle ablaze and she opened her presents after dessert and chatted with her grandparents who all called with their well-wishes. I still can't wrap my brain around the fact that my baby is 7 years old already! I mean, I just held her in my arms all swaddled in a receiving blanket wearing her little hat with the maroon ribbon on it yesterday, right?! :)

Happy Birthday, sweet girl.

Singing to sis. Her artwork is still on the wall from her party.

She wore her doggy costume to open her presents. It matched the theme.
I don't think she planned it that way, but it worked.

Enjoy this smile now; she'll have teeth by next year!

And, thus ends another exciting birthday post. Do you think I should work on making these a little shorter...? :)