Last Saturday Noah was invited to his friends’ birthday party. Tim and Ben are twins in our ward, and they and Noah get along like gang-busters. Sarah and Sophie were honored that they were asked to come along and help run the games. It was an outdoor carnival-type party, and most of the bigger kids were all at the temple, so it was their turn to be chosen. They weren’t sure they wanted to, though, until I assured them that I would also be staying and running a game. Then they were all smiles.
We brought Alexandra along since she would have been bored to tears home alone with Papa, but that ended up being a mistake. We forgot she is terrified of Lexy the dog, who lives with Tim and Ben. The rest of us love her, and secretly pretend she’s our dog, so it was natural that it slipped our minds. She climbed up our legs, and ran away for about the first hour, but then finally calmed down a bit. Still kept looking around asking where the dog was, but at least she wasn’t crying! 🙂
I came a bit early, although not as early as I intended, to help set up. The kids hung out on the trampoline.
I meant to take more pictures of the girls’ games, but I was kind of busy running my own. Here is the best shot I took.
Sophie did the ring toss game, I did the bowling game, and Sarah in the background had the “I spy” game. That was pretty cool. They had hung different toys in the tree, and the kids had to stand in a certain spot, look through binoculars and count all the different things they saw. I may steal that for a future birthday party….
This is the dog, Lexy. And that is Alexandra running in the opposite direction! haha A little while later, one of the kids was playing fetch with Lexy. But they were using a huge, must have been 4 foot long stick. Lexy was running with one end of it in her mouth, went past Sophie, clipped the back of her legs with the stick, and caused Sophie to do an awesome backflip in the air, landing on her knees in the grass. We were all laughing so hard, including Sophie. I so wish I had had a video camera running at the time. She didn’t get hurt at all, just very surprised!
Alexandra finally found a safe place to hide out from the dog, and bonus! it was by all the food!! That’s our friend, Iliana, filling up the drinks.
While we were setting out the food, the kids were playing games on the trampoline.
They seemed to all being having a really great time. Only later did Sophie tell me the whole story. Apparently, the little boy in green sitting next to her took a shine to Sophie. He kept holding her hand and kissing it! 
Here is Simon, Sophie’s ardent admirer! He is pretty cute! And check out the awesome animal plates the kids got eat off of. It was a great party, and a perfect way to spend a sunny afternoon.