Madie's Birthday Party

I am so far behind this week!!! This weekend was a crazy, busy one. Madie turned 8 on Sunday and we had her birthday party on Sat night. I don't think we slowed down one bit the entire time. That's why I'm just now getting to posting. Heck I still haven't posted about Noah's field trip last Friday. Guess I'll try and do that tomorrow. Looks like I'm working backwards. ;-) Anyway, we had a really terrific time on Sat.! I wasn't going to throw Madie a party this year, but apparently she thought she was having one, because she told all her friends to come! Ornery! So, I went ahead and booked the IVGA (Gymnastics Academy) for her party. It's so easy with them. It's a 2 hr party and they have an instructor who takes them through different activities for the first hour, then there's a half hour party where they provide all the decorations and napkins and plates and food and drinks, then a half hour at the end of free play. All I had to do was show up with the cake and the money. :-) Pretty sweet deal!



Madie got to have 9 friends come, plus herself and she had 8 that showed up. Livie was there, but was in a mood, so you won't see her in many of the pictures. They did their stretches and a musical star game on the bouncy floor first. You can see, they did NOT want to stop bouncing!!!

Then they had an obsticle course that they got to run and jump and climb through.

Then they went to the tumble track. She was making them jump as far as they could over the jumpropes to see who was the best jumper. :-)

The next game was a "Madie says" game. She sat on the beam with her instructor Miss Mandy and the rest of the kids stood on the beams in front of her and she made them do different things like stand on one foot or jump or something. If someone fell off, they had to go sit by her.

Here they are waiting their turns to jump on the giant trampoline. This was the last station before heading in for pizza and presents!!

Pizza Hut is right across the street, so they brought in the pizzas for us and the kids ate that up. Well, all the kids except Noah. He doesn't like pizza. Can you believe that?!!!!

Then we brought out the ice cream cake, asked for especially by Madie. Several of the kids said they didn't want cake - that is, until they heard it was made out of ice cream! Then all the hands went up. ;-)

Here she is blowing out her candles.

She got some really cute presents from her friends. This was a High School Musical outfit that she's opening. She was thrilled!

This is the "silly face" picture. Aunt Jill has made this a favorite in our house. :-) Livie was too busy eating her cake to want to take part in the picture, but her friends are as follows...

BACK ROW - Tessa, Emma, and Michael FRONT ROW - Noah, Madie, Jade, Jack, and Andrew

Tessa, Emma, and Jack are brothers and sisters of some of our best friends here in Ottawa. Their little brother Charlie was too little to come. He just turned 1. Then Jade is our neighbor friend. And, Michael and Andrew are brothers and are best friends of the kids. We've just recently gotten to know their parents. Really great people. :-)

After that picture, it was free time! They blew up the inflatable slide, which the kids slid down a good 1000 times before that half hour was over.

Madie's jumpin' high on the trampoline!!

Her best friend Michael was just getting over being sick (still is recovering) and was WIPED OUT by the time the party was over. You could tell he wanted to be running around and playing, but his poor body was so exhausted, that he just had to keep resting to make it through. Such a sweetie. I kept going up to him and asking if he was ok and he'd say "Yeah, just need to rest a bit, so I can do more stuff". I just love him. :-)

Madie's trying out the bars. She and Emma and Tessa had lots of fun on this one.

This was actually taken on the day of her birthday. We gave her a Star Wars Clone Wars book on Sat during the party, so she thought she had gotten all her presents, but we surprised her with a new bike on Sunday. She was soooo excited!!! So, I do believe she had a terrific birthday. She raved on and on about how fun her party was. All the kids were so disappointed when it was over. They thought the 2 hrs went by too quickly. Pete and I thought it had gone on for 20 hours! So, we were ready to call it a night. Boy, are we getting old! But, my sweetie is 8, had 8 friends, and 8 presents, and was happier than ever. So, I guess we can count it a success! Oh, and to make that night complete, when we got home and had the kids get ready for bed, we discovered Noah was covered all over his torso in a rash. A rash that was VERY similar to the one Madie had when she had strep last year. So, Sunday, on her birthday, Pete had to take him to the emergency room and whaddaya know?! He has strep. Scarlet Fever to be precise. So, again, another reason why the past few days have been a bit crazier than normal.