Ashtyn's 8th Birthday!

Ashtyn had a lot of fun celebrating her birthday this year! Because she was turning 8, it was a different celebration than we normally do and it was fun to make it special for her. 

With Mom and Dad on her birthday date 💗

We normally do cake and ice cream with family for the kids' birthday parties, but on their 8th birthday, they get a friend party. Ashtyn was so excited for this and decided on a butterfly theme. Because it was a friend party, we did it on the Saturday before her birthday (her birthday was on a Monday). She wanted to invite family as well, but I reminded her that family would be celebrating with her on her baptism day. 

The kids made the decorations. They made paper butterflies and then hung them all over the ceiling. 

They each made one of these butterflies (Rylee top, Ashtyn middle, Parker bottom) from poster board. 

Ashtyn also made the butterfly decorations for the cake with toothpicks. She got the idea from her cousin Elizabeth. Ashtyn really wanted a strawberry cake. 

Ashtyn also made all these cacoons (at varying stages) and hung them here. 

Lots of butterflies!

The first thing we did as her friends started arriving was make these butterfly wands. All the kids had a lot of fun doing it and it gave them a chance to meet anyone they didn't know. 

After the wands, we moved to the living room to play games. They played Freeze Dance, Caterpillar Caterpillar Butterfly (or Duck, Duck, Goose--Ashtyn came up with it), and Butterfly Says (Simon Says). 

I had planned to decorate cookies at the very end, but some of the kids had to leave early and I forgot to make the ice cream while they were playing games, so we decorated cookies next. These were Rylee's (when you let a four-year-old have free reign on frosting and sprinkles 😂). 

Oliver loved the cookies too!

Ashtyn's party minus a few kids who had already left!

Parker and Paisley (Parker's age, but loves hanging out with both Ashtyn and Parker) were the last ones to finish decorating their cookies. 

Then we opened presents. I had thought I would wait until everyone had left to open presents, but all the kids including Ashtyn wanted to do it during the party, so I figured it was fine. 

Then singing and cake and ice cream! 

We had some extra time after, so the kids who didn't need to leave early played outside in our backyard until the party was over. I think they all had fun and Ashtyn had a great time. I had been nervous since it was my first time as a mom hosting a friend party, but I thought things went really well. I did learn some things--next time I would buy ice cream instead of making it, plan on 2 hours instead of 3, and have one treat (we did cookies and cake with ice cream and it was just a lot). But it went really well overall. 

On Monday, we did our birthday date with Ashtyn. We always get them a book as a present to open from us, but the majority of our gift is the date, where they get to pick what they want to do with Mom and Dad. Ashtyn opened her present in the car because we were driving out to Thanksgiving Point and wanted to get going. She was really excited to start reading it right away. 

After dropping off her siblings at Grandma Lindi's, we drove out to Lehi. Ashtyn chose to listen to the audiobook of Ogre Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine and she worked on a weaving project she'd gotten for her birthday. She said it "really helped pass the time". 

When we got there, we found the back of the butterfly biosphere and Ashtyn was so excited. 

One of Ashtyn's love languages is quality time, so things like special dates mean so much to her.

Ashtyn loves all things bugs and the biosphere had a ton of bug stuff for her to look at and explore. She was in heaven!

These were bumblebees. 

Stick bugs!

A giant stick bug.

Ashtyn and Ben thought the spider section was really cool. 
I mostly avoided looking 😂

Ben's video of the tarantula. 

Some 

And a scorpion. 

They had a really cool setup to see the ants. 

This is a pumpkin rotting without any bugs.

And this is one with bugs helping the process along. 

This is a giant water bug. The kids love finding water bugs in the creek, but we've never seen one this big before. 

In with the butterflies! 

It was really cool to be in a place where butterflies were just flying all around. 

Ashtyn loved holding the butterflies!

She found a dead one. 

The butterflies kept landing on me! I think they liked that my shirt was white combined with how my sleeves were shaped maybe. 

They also have a place with the chrysalises. Ashtyn loved it. 

Then lunchtime! Ashtyn wanted a grilled cheese sandwich with chocolate milk. Ben got a turkey avocado sandwich, and I got a cheeseburger. The food was okay, but we were pleasantly surprised with how reasonable their prices were. 

After that we went to the dinosaur museum, because it was closest to the biosphere. If I had to do it over again, I'd do this museum last because Ashtyn liked the Museum of Curiosity more. 

It's a cool museum. It wasn't too different from the one in Vernal, though it's definitely bigger and has more. 

One of the biggest differences was the hands on exhibits for kids. Ashtyn did the one where you dig in the sand for a little bit, but she wanted the one with water the most. 

She loved this part of the museum, where they have a river with sand for the kids to play in. We stayed here almost 30 minutes and still had to pull her away.

I knew she would love the next museum though, so we went back to the car. 

On the way, we stopped for an ice cream cone. Ashtyn asked for a cherry on top of hers 😂

Then onto the Museum of Natural Curiosity! Ashtyn loved it. We only had about an hour left because we had to get back to pick up her siblings, so we only explored a portion of it, but she loved every minute.

This was a tornado simulator which Ashtyn kept coming back to because she thought it was so cool. 

This was an exhibit about wind power, but we couldn't get it to work very well. 

Ashtyn's favorite place was this hurricane simulator. 

She also had a lot of fun (and spent a lot of time) here, working on getting the water to move the ball. She was really excited when she finally got it to work!

This was another favorite spot of hers. She loved climbing all over this and going over the bridge to this airplane thing. 

She also discovered the trading post. You trade in something from nature to earn points and then can "buy" things at their store. At first, we thought we'd just have to leave and do it the next time, then we remembered a leaf Ashtyn had put in my purse earlier. She traded that in and really wanted to the white rock, but it was 5 points more than she had. Then she decided she wanted the green rock but found out that she got extra points since it was her first time. She decided she still wanted the green rock and then also picked the black one. 

We did a couple more things, including a maze challenge and this jumping challenge, and then we had to go. Ashtyn wished we could stay a lot longer and honestly, I did too. But the ride home was uneventful, and all the other kids did really well while getting babysat. 

Ashtyn absolutely loved her date and I'm so glad we were able to do that with her. We love Ashtyn so much and I'm so glad to have her as my daughter!