Rylee's Birthday Party

Rylee's actual birthday isn't until the end of June, but she was so excited to plan a birthday party with Grandma Hunt before school gets out. The planning started a few weeks ago and the invitations were sent out. 27 invitations total including her entire school and primary classes and 1 neighbor girl. I had put on the invitation 'Regrets Only' and didn't hear from a single soul that couldn't make it. Whoa!

Grandma, Rylee and I went to work planning a Jungle Safari birthday party. Grandma found fabulous decorations, party favors and a fun monkey pinata (and so much more)! Ryan and I geared up for the games and food with really no clue of how many kids would actually make it. I must say we were a little surprised to find that 20 kids were able to come! We planned about 8 or 9 games in the backyard and thanks to amazing aunts and uncles (Carla, Kyle, Aaron & Angela- you are all angels!!) the party was a huge success! Unfortunately, a funeral took Gma and Gpa to Idaho, but we are so thankful for all of their hard work (and Gma Didi's too) in making Rylee's party such a fun time.

Needless to say after all the kids left, we were all pooped! We had no idea that having so many kids for only 2 hours would be such hard work!! It was all worth it though to see Rylee and her friends having such a great time. (I think though that we'll have the 'friends parties' every other year!) Thanks again to everyone that helped us out - we couldn't have done it without you, especially Grandma!

We tried to snap some pics, but it was such a whirlwind that our camera didn't make it out for most of the party. I'm pretty sure Angela got some more.

"Hippo Mud Puddles" (brownies and ice cream) and opening gifts

As if we didn't have enough going on yesterday, it was also the annual dumpster day in our neighborhood. Six commercial-size dumpsters are brought in and everyone in the neighborhood can come and dump all their junk. And boy, did we take advantage of that! Ryan got up at 6:45am to load our old windows (14), old carpet, about 8 contractor bags of drywall, and wood siding (from the windows) that had been sitting beside the house for almost a year now. Luckily, everything fit in to the back of the truck (only allowed one car load) and Ryan was off by 8:15am to wait in line and dump it all, just across our cul de sac. Thanks to dumpster day, we no longer will have to rent our own dumpster until we re-do the kitchen - yay!

I don't think it gets more 'Hillbillies' that this!