Daily dose of domestic bliss: Sude's 8th Birthday Party...

My first born has turned 8 last Sunday. I was so emotional this particular birthday, I kept thinking "She is 8 and in another 8 years, she will start driving" The last 8 years went by so fast , it is scary to think the next 8 years will go that fast also... (By the way, check out those abs...)

This year, we decided to have a party in our backyard with a Carnival theme. She has so many friends from gymnastics, school, and Turkish community. We ended up inviting 22 kids and only one said she could not make it. When that happened, I decided to hire some help. I asked two coaches from her gym to come and help with the games outside so that I can focus on food, etc.

Since I am "organized", I made a list of games that they can play and gave to the coaches... I got a roll of tickets and they were given to kids after every activity. Then, I put out bags of goodies marked as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 which represented the goodies that they could get for their tickets. They got to pick the toys/candy from them and pay with their tickets. They also kept their candy from the pinata and put all of their stuff in their loot bags...

It was so much fun... The best thing was how appreciative and thankful Sude was after the party.
Here is a copy of my activity printout with some pictures...

Make a loot bag
- Use stickers and markers
- Make sure each one of them puts their name on the bag

Game with bean bags
- Draw circles and give a number to each circle
- Draw a line where they need to throw the bean bags
- Give them tickets for the total numbers they hit

Tattoos
- Give a ticket to each kid who gets a tattoo

Decorate driveway
- Make a large rectangle and have everyone decorate it for Sude

Piñata
- Have everyone ready with their loot bags and they can put the candy in their bags

Swim games
- Diving and getting most of the circles from the pool (maybe 4 at a time) – give as many tickets as the things they get from the pool