Camping Party

For Maggie's birthday party, she decided that she wanted to have a camping party and roast hotdogs and marshmallows and then have everyone sleep over in our trailer. So, that's what we went for this year. She started writing a post about this on her blog, but has yet to finish. So I'll post it on mine and whenever she finishes hers, you can read about it again. :)

So when all her friends arrived on Friday night, they picked their beds in the trailer and got set up, then went outside to play on the swings/trampoline or tetherball. Then the girls cooked their hot dogs and ate their dinner.

After we got that cleaned up, I had put together two games. The first was a scavenger hunt where they had to find pieces of paper with a letter and a number on it. Since I wanted to keep most of the party outside and I was hiding paper and I didn't want them to blow away, I put the papers in Easter eggs and had them hunt for easter eggs. They each had to find 12 easter eggs. When they found all the eggs, they took the papers out and they had to put the papers in order from one to seventy something. When they put the numbers in order, the letters spelled out a message. It was so funny to watch them try to put all the papers in order and then figure out the message.

They worked well together and were really excited to find out what it said. The message told them to find a package that had something to do with "light" hidden inside. The package was hidden in the trailer. They brought the package back out to the backyard and this was the start of the 2nd game, "Pass the parcel". I had wrapped up a box 9 times with different wrapping paper. They all sat in a circle and had to pass the package around and when the "Hannah Montana" music stopped, then whoever was holding the box had to unwrap one layer and then do whatever was written on the next layer of paper. They were silly things like "plug your nose and sing Twinkle Twinkle little star." So, they each got a turn doing that. When the music was playing, they were all singing along at the top of their lungs to Hannah Montana. It was fun to watch. Anyway, when the last person unwrapped the final piece of wrapping paper, they got to open the box and inside was a flashlight for each person, which they thought was really cool.

Since we have "a forest" behind our house, I had Garrett take them on a nature walk out in the woods after the game. They really loved that--it was quite the adventure I guess, because it's pretty thorny back there. There's supposedly a trail that leads to a little pond or something. They enjoyed it though and got to use their new flashlights.

When they returned, we opened presents and then had cake and icecream. Her cake turned out really cute, I must say. Did you know that they make candy that look just like rocks? I had no idea! But they looked great on the cake!

After the presents, they all wanted to go into the trailer and get their jammies on. They did that and played Apples to Apples, which is a really fun game. Then they watched High School Musical 3. By then it was midnight and I made them go to bed. Lydia and I slept in there with them. They all went to sleep rather quickly. Or maybe, I'm the one that went to sleep quickly and didn't hear a thing. Who knows!? :)

Unfortuneatly, I forgot to take the camera into the trailer with me, so I don't have any pictures of them playing games or in their beds. Oops.

The next morning, we had chocolate chip pancakes, bacon and strawberries and they got to eat in the trailer. They started watching "Bedtime Stories", but only got through half of it before it was time to go home. It was a really fun theme and I think they all had fun. It was a beautiful day for an outside party, so I'm extremely glad that the weather cooperated.