Shannon's 8th Birthday Bonanza

Well, all I can say is that we survived! We had 30 kids and 6 adults here for the extravaganza. God came through with the weather. They were calling for rain and that would have meant trouble for our outside party. We prayed hard for days and God answered our prayers, we had sunshine. The ironic thing is that night after the party we had a torential downpour! For these things we are very thankful! Shannon has told me it was the best day of her life, so it was worth it. We invited both classes of the 2nd grade at NIS, as well as some neighborhood kids. We ordered a cake from Costco and had it shipped from Osaka. It is the only place that makes a cake that big. Japanese cakes seem to all be about 5-6" in diameter, definitely not enough to feed 36 people! Her theme was High School Musical. We had a friend bring some party supplies from Party City in Seattle. We created some games special for Shannon. My favorite was "Pin the Ponytail on Shannon!" Eric enlarged a picture of Shannon from Guam and we laminated it, then Eric found a blonde ponytail online, stretched it to make it "Shannon size," printed out 30 of them and voila! Everyone thought it was hilarious. We made our version of a cake walk into a "Candy Walk." Eric printed various pictures from High School Musical, put them in plastic sleeves so the kids could walk on them, turned on the H.S.M. soundtrack and they were all walkin'! Erika and her friend Dani were in charge of that and also the water balloon toss. That was a hit as well. The Japanese kids had never done anything like this. Taylor and his friend Luke were in charge of H.S.M. Bingo. We also played a few games that we remembered from Awana Sparks gametime. All in all, it was a hit, and no one wanted to leave (except for me and Eric)! We have sent Shannon into her 8th year of life with a huge bang!