Happy 8th Birthday, Sydney

Sydney celebrated her 8th birthday in style.  She had definite ideas about how she wanted it to go down.

1.  Miles and I ate lunch with her at school on the Friday before her birthday.

It's fun to see her with her friends and I always like spying on the other kids' lunches to see what other family's dole out.

2.  On Sunday, her birthday day, she had breakfast in bed.

2a.  Then she opened her family presents.

3.  On Thursday, she had her friend birthday party.  She wanted a "book theme."

It was really fun to put together (I can't believe I'm saying that).

The invitations were actual library check out cards from the olden days.

She wanted a donut birthday "cake" ("If You Give a Dog a Donut"???)  --- 

.... everyone else wanted the donuts, too. ....

Heavy heavy hangover ...

 The lunch spread: it ended up being thrown together -- but take note:  the sandwiches were supposed to look like books.

The kids played games related to "Books".  One was a spin off of that baby shower game where you have to eat baby food and guess what it is.  Only, this time they each had a spoon and passed a pouch of baby food around while a book on tape was playing.   When I stopped the tape, the person holding the baby food had to eat a bite.  That was fun to watch.  Some kids were grossed out and others faked loving the food.

The hit of hits, though, was a treasure hunt using books.  Sydney made library cards for each friend.  Working in pairs, they had to check out books from the library in between clues to find the location of the next clue.  Kids were busily scurrying all over the house for a long time while I sat in my quiet library waiting for children to check out books.  This was a low-stress birthday party!!!  They were practically entertaining themselves.  My favorite part was making a "ka-ching" sound when I scanned their library cards on the lego scanner.   If there was a backlog for checking out books, they had to wait in line.  Just like in a real life library.  They were eating it up.

Once each team had all their clues, they turned their clue cards over to find a word scramble.  That's right -- two games in one.  Each scramble revealed a title of one of Sydney's favorite books.  First team done got first pick on the prize.  You guessed it:  a book.

They went home with book bags they'd made (conveniently still very wet with paint) and other goodies -- like Bookworms! (Gummy worms -- thanks pinterest).

Anyway,  that was the secular party.  Coming up ... Sydney's Baptism which was the following Saturday.