Teddy Bear Picnic

So, I'm a little behind in my blogging...

Dawna's birthday party this year was a "Teddy Bear Picnic." She had six friends from nursery and primary. Each brought along a stuffed furry friend to enjoy the party. I even got creative and designed invitations on GIMP.

We all enjoyed a variety of activities including:

• Taking our teddies for a ride on a parachute
• Playing "musical bears" to the "Teddy Bear Picnic" Song
• Sack race... aka: put your teddy in a pillowcase and run around the cones...
• Decorating bear cookies
• And the treasure hunt... which requires some explanation...

Before decorating cookies, I had the kids put their teddies down for a "nap" and covered them all with a blanket. Then we all went to the kitchen. While Emily, Jessie, Sarah, and mom helped the kids decorate, I took the teddies out from under the blanket and put them in the "forest" in our backyard. I put them on a checkered picnic blanket and next to each teddy was a little bag of gummy bears... So, after the cookie decorating was done, I took the kids to wake up the bears... but --POOF!!-- there were NO BEARS under the blanket where they left them for a nap... but there were bear footprints with clues such as, "tiptoe down the path," and "skip across the lawn to the swing." The footprints led the kids to their teddies who were having a picnic of their own in the woods! It was really cute! It was the best executed party activity--some of the others required a little more prodding on my part...

Jon helped me make the cake, which was actually a rice crispy treat bear... Which we actually ended up eating after the party for Family Home Evening that night
I really had a lot of fun with this and I hope Dawna will have good memories of her first "friends" birthday party!