Morgan's 8th Birthday

We celebrated Morgan's birthday with family a couple weeks early, because it just worked out the best time for several reasons...and EVERYONE made it! 

 

 

Morgan helped design her birthday cake.  We actually used food coloring in the cake batter to make it marbled with purple.  Morgan thought that was GREAT!

 

 Morgan received a lot of great presents!  She has several new craft projects AND science projects to do, several new clothes for her and outfits handmade by my mom for her American Girl Doll, a talking Olaf that she has wanted since Christmas and more wonderful gifts.

 

 She is ready to try that one-of-a kind cake...

...had to blow the candle out first though.

 

We had tried to keep the party simple.  Morgan asked for snacks instead of a dinner/cookout, so I was able to prepare everything ahead of time.  Turns out when you only feed snacks, though, your guests don't fill up on a dinner and EVERYONE takes cake.  We need to remember to make a bigger cake next time...although we managed to spread that little cake out to 20 people! ;-) (Rich and I were the only ones who didn't get a piece.)

 

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Even though we have a party at a separate time, we still try to make the actual birthday special too.  I think Morgan was more excited than I've ever seen her before for this birthday.

 

Morgan requested waffles for breakfast, but I talked her into pancakes...since Birthday panCAKEs seemed to fit the occasion better.  (And they don't take nearly as long to make...VERY important on a school morning!)  She even got to choose her topping of blue icing and pink sprinkles.

 

Morgan decorated the cupcakes for her class this year.  They smelled delicious!  (Rich and I still didn't get any cake...lol!)

 

 At school, Morgan's teacher gave her a few things for it being her birthday and some of her classmates made her cards.  When I picked her up from school, we went to the library.  The library had a contest where the top 20 guesses for the number of books in the library each received a digital bookmark.  I had gotten the call the day before that Morgan and Blake each received a bookmark, but Morgan won with the closest guess and got to choose something from their prize box!  I thought that would be a fun thing to do for a birthday activity! ;-)

 

We also stopped at the grocery store so Morgan could pick out an ice cream to have for an after school treat and she chose ice cream sandwiches. (Yum!)

 

After the kids had their treat, Morgan wanted to do one of her science projects she got at her birthday party and decided on the Dinosaur Dig.

 

She must have dug for that dinosaur for about 2 hours total, but this was the first piece she found.

 

Blake was getting too anxious watching Morgan dig, so he sat down with a new book and read it to me...wearing my sunglasses :-)

 

Morgan chose to have hot dogs and nachos for her birthday dinner.  My mom also stopped by and dropped off mini cupcakes.  (Rich and I finally got some cake!  LOL!)

 

After dinner Morgan opened her present that we saved for her birthday.  She received two books in the same series as "Like Bug Juice on a Burger".  As you can see, she was thrilled!

 

 She also got a couple cartridges for her InnoTab3...a Sophia the First game and a Doc McStuffins.  Again, super excited!  She had been wanting them since receiving her InnoTab for Christmas.

 

I offered for her to have a movie night or a family game night and she chose a game night.  We only played one game, Farkle Around, then she went back to digging out her dinosaur, which she finished, and playing her new InnoTab games.

 

Morgan's own dinosaur 'fossil' all pieced together.

 

We finished off the day measuring the kids' heights.  We try to do that a couple times a year...it's always neat seeing how much they've grown.  The last time we measured them was January 1st and Blake has grown just under an inch since then, while Morgan has grown just over an inch!  I had teased them before we started that they 'better not have grown at all'....no such luck! ;-)