Our little girl turns eight today! Sweet Hadley Mae! We celebrated this weekend by having eight of her friends over for a party! I’ve struggled with this for a while, but the last few years we decided to invite however many friends to celebrate as the age she is turning. So, for her eighth birthday, she had eight friends over. It’s too much for me to have a ton of friends at a party, there are too many to invite when you have three different classes of second graders. We narrow it down to the age she is turning, which might change in a few years but for now it works!

This year she chose an animal themed party, she just loves going to the zoo and loves all the animals!

I bought a few toy animals from Kroger actually and made them each little party hats! Hadley wanted a simple cake this year, just animals and a number eight!

For the food, I went simple and did snacks only. Since the time of the party wasn’t really during lunch or dinner, so I just did some snacks. I was shocked, but the girls actually asked for more fruit!

Instead of the traditional favors kids get at a birthday party, I got each of the girls a stuffed animal that started with the same initial as their name! I made them all their own lanyards and a few fun facts about their animal. They all loved it! After they all got their animals, and had fun with them for a little bit, they made collars for their animal.

After they made all of the collars, we had Doctor Kevin come in and give a health check to all the animals. It was so funny listening to all the girls come up with symptoms their animal has, and then the diagnosis Doctor Kevin came up with. The girls were laughing needless to say!

The activities I had planned didn’t last very long! So, we came up with the idea of doing a tic tac toe challenge! We had all the girls partner up, and whoever was the first to win three games won, and then so on and so on. Turns out that Miss Camryn is the tic tac toe queen!

Cake and present time! It’s so cute watching Hadleys friends watch her open her presents, who is super into cards, and who is super observant on gifts, etc. I love all the different personalities!

Some of the girls were posing like their animal would, they were really having fun with them.

Aren’t they adorable? I think they all had fun! Happy 8th birthday to our sweet Hadley Mae!