These Ordinary Moments: Carley's Birthday!

I apologize, I have been terrible not to finish posting all of my journal entries thus far.....

However...... I do have a good excuse for being distracted and busy this past week.
I was preparing for Carley's 8th Birthday!!!
Oh, I can hardly believe it. She is growing so fast! We are so extremely blessed by this amazing, beautiful, caring, clever young girl. She brightens our world, she inspires and encourages. She spreads love and laughter wherever she goes and always reaches out to make friends. She is unique and wonderful and we thank God for her and pray He blesses her life for His Glory.

She woke up to a barricade of streamers and balloons covering her bedroom doorway, and then her daddy surprised her by going to eat lunch with her at school, and I (like any dutiful mommy keeping up with the other mommies) ofcourse had to take decorated cupcakes for her class, lol.
After school, her cousins came out and met us at the new splash pad.
We had pizza and cake and since one of her gifts was a camping tent, she and Zoe got to "camp out" in the living room and watch her new Nancy Drew movie.

Saturday night was the mystery birthday adventure that I had been secretly planning all week. I'm too last minute to have actually gotten a themed birthday party put together, but it was certainly a huge hit nonetheless.

She had no idea, which made it even better.

It was a whole Nancy Drew inspired, super sleuth, mystery adventure. The girls got to be Junior Detectives and dress up and have special detective kits. They were on the case of "The Missing Birthday Gift". There were clues to read, a story to follow, riddles to solve, puzzles to figure out .....and they had to go all over town to do it. I think I had as much fun writing out the storyline and putting it all together as they did solving it! Jeremy had a blast too! We love doing these scavenger hunts (must do them more often). There was a messenger boy, a young girl, a lady in a yellow dress, an old farmer, a gypsey, a girl on a white stallion and a pirate! They found secret clues and avoided dangerous spies and robbers. They went to a bell tower, an old church, an antique museum, an abandoned barn, treehouse and finally back to the starting point to find the gift that had traveled around the world from Cambodia safely tucked away in mom's suitcase. ;)