Jacque's birthday!!

Jacque turned 8 yrs old!!  She is very excited about getting baptized this next Sunday.  Jacque is such a special girl.  She is the best big sister that anyone could ever want.  She loves to play with her sisters and loves to read to anyone that wants to hear a story.  She loves school and loves learning.  Jacque is a hard worker and loves to run, jump rope, and swing on the monkey bars.  Jacque is in love with horses right now, so we had a horse them for her birthday party!  We invited some friends over and played a bunch of "horse" games.  Sorry, but these pictures will not be in the order I would like.  I tried moving pictures and was having difficulties, so you get it in this order!

This first game is barrel racing.  We had two teams and two different obstacles.  They had to go around all three chairs, keeping their hat on and the broom between their legs, then hand them off to the next person.  The first team done won!  Actually they all won, because they all got a candy after the game.  I think they had fun with it.  We also played horse shoes and pin the tail on the horse, but I didn't get pictures of the kids doing those.

Jacque 

 Samuel

 Ellen

 A friend helping show Ellen where to go next.

 Calista

 Calista finishing the race

 I let the kids decorate the house with streamers and they had fun.  Samuel decided to spell "party" and everyone else tore little strips of the streamers and tape them all over the walls and chairs.

 Our horse cake. I know there aren't any ears, but it just wasn't worth the fight to keep the ears.  The ears kept falling apart and the icing wasn't sticking very well.

Jacque's gifts.  We didn't do this at the party. We keep the party for games and do presents as a family.

  Jacque got a journal with a horse on the cover.  I'm hoping I can get the kids interested in keeping a journal this year.

 This is our horse for the pin the tail on the horse game.  I'm actually really embarrassed about this picture, but the kids loved it.  It has the body of one horse and the neck/head and legs of another one, but I was in a hurry, and knew the kid wouldn't care.  It helped having Samuel by my side praising my artistic abilities, but I know the truth.

 This isn't a very good picture, but on the table we had nine paper bags with a topic listed on each one.  They were supposed to write something in that categorie and place it in the bag and move on to the next one.  For example, they said something like "your name," "a place," "an emotion," and so on.  Then during lunch I read a mad lib story inserting their words into it.  They were pretty funny and the kids liked it.

 Hanging out, waiting for the party to start.

 Sarah found the balloons!

 Cake time!

Jacque also got a stamping set.  She loves making cards and notes for everyone, so I thought she'd really like this.  We made our invitations for the party using the stamps and paper too.