It's Great to be Eight!

Our little Carly has officially turned 8! Hard to believe how quickly time goes by. It was her year to have a friend birthday party (we try to ration those out at our house to spare my sanity) and she has had a plan in the works since last October! That's right, October of 2009. That is when we went to Disneyland for the second time and she was tall enough to ride "Indiana Jones." She loved it and soon thereafter started planning an Indiana Jones birthday party.

When everyone arrived we decked them out in an Indy hat, messenger bag for collecting various treasures, and a licorice whip. Aren't they cute? Too bad my girls have such a difficult time keeping their eyes fully open for photos!

Hidden in one of their bags was the first clue for the treasure hunt. It said something about splitting into teams and making mummies. So we split them into three different groups, gave them each a roll of toilet paper and had them race to see who could create their mummy fastest and find the clue. It turns out that buying the cheapest toilet paper you can find is not the best idea for this game because it kept tearing. Whoops!Next they did a holy grail relay where they had to take turns dipping the grail into the snake pit to fill it with water and then run the water over to a bucket. The idea was that they had to fill the bucket so full that the bad guy (Drew) would drop it and release their next clue. This clue was cut into a puzzle so they had to put that together first and then move on.

They had to go to the archaeology dig to search for the next clue and also some treasure rocks! We made them by wrapping little prizes in tissue paper, then in tin foil, dipping it in plaster of Paris, and then spraying them gold. The kids had to hit the rock on the ground to crack them open and find out what prize was inside!
The last clue sent them back inside the house where they had to search through three dishes at the banquet (monkey brains, snake guts & eyeball soup) to find the golden idols.
It all wrapped up with presents and cupcakes. Drew made little snakes, whips, and Indy hats as toppers and they turned out really cute. After all the kids went home we pretty much headed straight out the door to go have dinner at the Mayan with grandma, grandpa, great-grandma & cousin Mekenzie. It fit the theme quite nicely and was a great way to end the day!We're so proud of Carly. She is such a kind, responsible, and mature little girl! She will be getting baptized on the October 9th and we can't wait for that day!