Under the Sea...

Definition:  8 year old birthday party: 
Thinking its a good idea to bring lots of children into your house and load them up with sugar while attempting to entertain them with endless games...

Ok...so maybe thats a better definition of exhausted. 

We had Maddie's 8th birthday party yesterday with some of her girlfriends from school.  So, while we had one no-show we ended up with 5 little girls that are FULL of energy and had a fabulous party day.

We started off the morning with my two best girls getting ready for the party...

I had spent the night before getting all the decorations up and blowing up balloons and setting up the tables.  We had streamers and under the sea decor and pin the fish in the shark's mouth...

I had also made Maddie's cake the day before.  She wanted a sandcastle cake.  Aiya!  I think I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself.  Its just a plain white cake and I used crushed graham cracker for the sand.

When John first saw the photo of it his comment was, "Oh, look...the waves got to it a little."  ha ha ha  you think you are so funny. 

Maddie was sosososososososososososososososso excited.  She waited in anticipation near the door for the first friend to show up.  It wasn't long before we had a whole pile of girls in the house and it was time to get started with games!

We played chubby bunny with strawberry marshmallows. 

Is anyone surprised that Maddie won this game with the biggest mouth?  She fit three whole marshmallows in her mouth and was still able to muster a chubby bunny.  She chose the beautiful dolphin statue that I got at a German 1 euro store.  I forgot to remove the price tag and when she saw it she was AMAZED that it was such a precious piece that cost sooo much.  I suppose if you check out the exchange rate she's not all that far off.  ha ha ha

We played jungle knot...They got bored with that really fast...

So we moved on to the balloon race with your noses...

Our poor small living room had never seen so much action in one day.   Even Bella got in on the action, but all the little girls demanded that she couldn't win because she didn't play right.  Poor bella...doesn't she look like she's miserable for not playing right?

We finished the games off with TWISTER....

And we all know how twister ends up...

The main activity of the day was decorating t-shirts.  They each got their very own high-label brand PBX basics (standard PX clothing...ha ha ha) white t-shirt and went to town decorating.  Our "right hand" assistant Miss Jennie was a wonderful helper and sat in the middle to ensure that nobody decorated the carpet or themselves with the markers.

The girls looked absolutely adorable in their shirts.  We had to have a photo.  I'll print one up for each of them and have Maddie deliver them at school next week...

Everyone is ready to EAT at this point...so we put the pizza in the oven and had Maddie open her presents.  She loved what she received...the funniest gift was a $20 bill from one of her friends...I think soldier dad didn't have time to get a gift so a $20 bill it was.  She also got a make your own doll kit, art supplies, new earrings and a necklace, lipgloss, and the Princess and the Frog DVD.

We sang Happy Birthday to Maddie - most of the girls told her she looked like a monkey and smelled like on too.  I used to think that version was sooooo dang funny.  I'm glad its still funny to 7/8 year olds.  Maddie blew out her candles and we cut the cake...

  Bella went into sugar shock.

So we sent everyone outside to play while we waited for parents to show up and cart their sugar infused children home...

It was a great day...afterward mama and Bella took a 3 hour nap and Maddie read.  Ahhhh...a great finish to a great day...