We partied like it was her 10th birthday!

This is how we handle birthdays at our house. We do a friend birthday party every other year and a family party every year. This birthday was the year for a friend party for Angelique. With her 10th birthday falling on a Tuesday, which is also soccer night, this lucky girl got to have her friend party BEFORE her actual birthday.
On Friday, September 24th, she invited 7 friends over for games, laughs, pizza and cake. It was a blast! We weren't sure if the weather was going to work out for the outside games or not, so Steve did some serious garage cleaning to prepare it as an alternate location. Thankfully, no rain fell on Friday so we got to be outside, which really cuts down on the crazy noise factor that can be generated by 8 spastic 4th graders.
We played a bunch of relay games including a balloon-popping, filling-a-water-glass-with-a-spoon, sewing-everyone-together & passing-an-orange-without-hands. We even got in a quick game of helping the sea turtle to get to the aquarium.
The traditional cake was replaced with an ice cream cake from DairyLand complete with M&M's and fudge between the layers. Sugar galore + enthusiastic party attendees = overstimulated mama. I gotta give a shout out to those individuals who are able to effectively teach and nurture the elementary age group because I was exhausted by the end of the evening. It seemed as though a good time was had by all, especially by the Birthday Girl.

Then we moved on to Birthday Party Round 2 with the family back at the farm on Saturday, September 25th...
More candles, more singing, more cake (this time double-chocolate from Aunt Claire) and more gifts. Here's hoping we provided enough protective gear for our accident prone girl to successfully master roller blading!