Kaitlyn's 4th Birthday

One week after Alan's party, we celebrated Kaitlyn's Birthday. She will be 4 on Monday, but this was the best day for the party. Needless to say, Tom and I are exhausted, but the kids are happy. We had a lot of fun today. Kaitlyn's party had an animal/zoo theme. Including our 3 big kids, there were 8 children there. It was the perfect size.

I thought the invitations for her party were so cute that I made a big Happy Birthday sign by scanning one onto the computer and turning it into a big poster.

To capture the children's attention, I asked them all to sit in a circle and tell me which animal they would like to be. Then I told them that the animal they want to be is hiding around the room, and that they can go find it. One by one they told me which animal they wanted, and I let them go get it. I had cut 13 different chunky animals out of some of my scrap wood for the kids to pick. Once they picked an animal, I had them hold onto it and we played "Zoo Upside down" which is the animal version of our favorite game growing up called, "Fruit basket upside down". They had alot of fun. One mom was so impressed with the game and the animals that she wanted me to cut her some animals and print out instructions to the game and sell it to her. I told her that I would just cut her some animals for free since it only takes me a few minutes. I thought that was kind of funny. Anway,... this picture shows just a few of the 13 different animals I cut this morning before the party.

We also played pin the tail on the lion with a picture of a lion I got from Kaitlyn's invitations. Notice how many of the tails aren't even close to the lion? One even ended up on the refridgerator in the kitchen to the right. The kids thought it was hillarious to laugh at how badly each other did in placing the tail.

We ended the party with the old favorite, smashing the heck out of a poor unsuspecting pinata animal. This party's victim was a brightly colored Llama. Here Sarah is laughing as she smacks

him.

Here's William enjoying the animal glasses that all the kids got in their goody bags: