Aiden's Birthday Safari

Here are the pics from Aiden's birthday party--I finally got around to uploading them to Photobucket!

We had such a great time at his party. We started off by decorating wooden "wiggle snakes," the toy snakes that squirm when you hold them. Amazingly, we didn't end up with paint everywhere--the kids did a great job of decorating and we ended up with a whole gang of colorful reptiles!

After the painting, the Creature Teacher came out and gave an awesome show for the kiddos. For those of you who aren't familiar with her work, the Creature Teacher is a former educator who now gives fun, educational presentations about animals--you get to pick from a list of animals and then she brings them to your home for the kiddos to touch and experience up close. (Click on her name to be taken to her website--I'd highly recommend her for private parties or kids events). Well, we had her come out and do a 45 minute show that featured 8 animals of our choosing: Aiden picked an African pygmy hedgehog, a milk snake, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, a bearded dragon, a box tortoise, a rabbit, a chinchilla, and a giant African bullfrog. The kids absolutely loved the show! They enjoyed seeing the chinchilla take a dust bath, and made bets as to which tortoise would win the tortoise race. Each child had the opportunity to pet each animal, and at different times, some kids would refuse to touch certain animals, like the snake or the bearded dragon. But what was hilarious is that of all the animals, every kid (except one) refused to touch the bullfrog! A harmless bullfrog! They all visibly cringed from the thing, like it was a deadly predator! It was quite strange! Now, I'm sure you are curious as to who was that lone brave child was that touched the bullfrog? It was none other than Stella Fox, who wins the Bravery Award for the day--Stella touched every animal in the show!

After the Creature Teacher's presentation, we headed back into the kitchen for cake and ice cream and "jungle punch." I decided to forgo making and decorating the cake myself this year--I just didn't have the time, what with a newborn in the house keeping me busy, so we ordered one from the Rockwall Cake Factory. It was a delicious cake and they did a great job of decorating it to fit our party theme.

After dessert, Aiden opened his gifts. He received so many nice things--his friends and family were very generous! He got a cool Batman belt that shoots, some Batman PJ's, a kids Bible, a bug collection kit, 2 Lego Star Wars games for the Wii (we returned one and exchanged it for Wii Winter Sports, a game we can play using the balance board), a farm animal play set, a hot wheels track/playset, several different Transformers, a Star Wars ship and several character figurines, and an awesome Spiderman coat. Brad and I wrapped up his gi for him to open and told him about his Karate lessons, too. He was so thrilled with his gifts, and after opening them all, the other kids helped him to break them in. They all disappeared into Aiden's room while the grown-ups talked and did a great job of covering the floor with toys (as I fully expected, with a group of kiddos this age!).

After some play time, the other children and their parents left and all of our family members and the Foxes stuck around to play Wii and eat pizza. We had a great time just talking and enjoying time together. Aiden was worn out by the end of the day from all of the excitement, but he talked about his party for days afterwards--he was so excited that he'd been able to celebrate with all of his family and friends.