Emily's birthday party

Today Emily turned 8! These are some pictures from her party last night. She picked a cooking party and it was so much fun! The invitations looked like recipe cards. When the kids arrived, They decorated aprons and received chef hats. I got the idea from Family Fun. Then we made pizzas--the girls especially loved rolling out the pizza dough. While the pizzas were cooking (Ryan was on oven duty) we played games.

Emily had requested the chopstick relay game she had played at the school carnival. This time we used gold fish crackers. So they had 20 seconds to see how many fishies they could get in the cup using chopsticks. We divided into teams--everyone wanted the Japanese girls on their teams, because they were the fastest with chopsticks, so we had to make sure the teams were equally divided with chopstick pros.

Then the girls frosted individual 5 inch cakes to take home in place of a goodie bag. We ate dinner, had our special ice cream cake that Emily designed herself and opened presents! Each guest also left with a recipe book--I had the moms email me their daughter's favorite recipe beforehand. It was a really fun party for me to plan and Emily loved it. I also had a 6th grade girl from my ward come be my party helper since I knew Ryan would be in the kitchen the entire night. One of the smartest things I've ever done...







sushi kit! The girl who gave this gift to Emily also gave me a sushi recipe for the recipe book we passed out. Good think Emily loves sushi, but I think I'll have Ryan be in charge of helping her with this one!


Since the party was the day before her actual birthday, today we spent a lazy day at home. The kids played with all the new birthday toys and watched the Hanana Montana DVD my mom sent two times. I spent the day recovering from the party and gearing up for Emily's baptism and the primary program tomorrow! Also, Emily and Trent discovered that Jacob laughs hysterically when they would pop a balloon. They popped all the leftover party balloons, and even blew up all the rest of the balloons we had in the house, just to pop them in front of Jake to watch him break out into laughter. It was hilarious!