Jared's Jungle Safari Party

 This year Jared got to have a friend birthday party.  I decided to plan a jungle safari party, since Jared loves jungle animals so much.  The night before the party Alan and I stayed up late to decorate our front room to look like a jungle.  Some of the stuffed animals we own, and some we borrowed.

Thank you, Little People, for letting me use your figurines for this cake. The cake wasn't too fancy, but it worked.  

This is a better picture of our jungle, taken in daylight.  Jared put his two favorite snakes on the back of the couch, but my favorite is the monkey hanging from the ceiling fan.

Maggie wanted to play the games, too.  She is in front in pink.  This was the ostrich egg relay.

Each guest got a safari hat, and we played lots of jungle games: tiger tiger lion (duck duck goose), animal charades, ostrich egg (balloon) relay, and "don't let the spider bite you" (hot potato with a toy spider--the music we listened to was "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"). We cleared a big space in one of our basement rooms to play games since it was much too hot to do them outside.

Alan played some of the games, too.  :)  This was tiger tiger lion.

After the games and an animal cracker snack, the kids went on a "safari" around our yard to look for mini jungle animals that Alan had hidden.  Each child used their binoculars we made earlier (out of toilet paper rolls and jungle-printed felt), and had stickers of each animal they were looking for to put in their photo albums.  There was a clue taped to each animal to help them find the next animal on the safari.  The kids LOVED this!

This lion was hiding in one of our tomato plants.  :)  I bought most of the animals for $1 each at Walmart.

After cake and ice cream we opened up presents.  I think Jared really loved his party and playing with his friends.  Whew!