Course, when you send out an invite like this, who could resist:
Join us for our first annual spring fling on the ranch!
We will be cooking up hotdogs and hamburgers, providing horse rides, pig chases, basketball, playing bean bag toss and horse-shoes.
For their comfort, please dress your children in camping clothes and tennis shoes. Your little ones will most likely get dirty! ;-)
Please bring a side dish or a desert to share. (If you would, please indicate what you are bringing when you RSVP so we can get a good balance of both.)
Please bring a side dish or a desert to share. (If you would, please indicate what you are bringing when you RSVP so we can get a good balance of both.)
There will be parking in the drive or along the road in front of the house.
Hope to see you there!
We planned to run the party in shifts. We had stations set up, so that while kids waited for horse rides, there were other things to occupy the time.
The Horseshoe Station: To our surprise, this was the most popular! Especially among the adults! By the middle of the party, there were some serious competitions going on!
The Bean Bag Toss Station: The kids didn't really go for this game. I am not sure why - I thought it was lots of fun! I think the person who I saw playing with it the most was Wyatt!
The Lasso Station: We had set up a large hay bale with a fake sheep head attached to it. James lent his two lasso's to the effort and was looking forward to giving lessons on how to rope. But, again, this one wasn't all that popular with the crowd.
The Basketball Station: This one was actually pretty popular. It didn't take off until the sun started to go down and the heat cleared out a bit, but the older boys played a LOT of basketball!
So what were all those kids doing if they weren't at the stations? Mostly, petting and playing with the animals! :) Buffy was a huge hit for the crowd that was waiting for June Bug rides. With her pretty bows, the request was often to brush her. I dug out her brushes and the kids had a great time showing Buffy the love. And of course, Buffy loved it too! She's such a prima donna!
If they weren't brushing Buffy, they were chasing the pigs and/or feeding the goats! It was great! The parents got a huge kick out of seeing their little ones chase around the potbellies!
The other thing that turned into a popular activity was giving wagon rides. Our old, red wagon turned into a huge highlight for the little (and big) kids! The little ones would pile inside and squeal with excitement as the bigger kids pulled and pushed them around.
I think mostly the kids just enjoyed having the space and freedom to run around and be kids. It was great!
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| JL doing what he did most of the time - giving horse rides. With 44 kids, at 4 minutes each, it took some time. :) I would say this was definitely the favorite of almost all the kids. How can you not love June Bug? |
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| Part of the adult crowd. With good friends and conversation, this scene didn't change much during the party. |
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| Here's most of the other part of the adult crowd. It was difficult to get a shot of everyone all together! |
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| If they weren't hanging around the patio, the rest of the crowd was up by the animal corral. |
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| Once JL fired up the grill, everyone settled in for some fabulous food! |
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| Most of the kids occupied the bench around the big shade tree on the deck. |
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| Here's a picture of the mini van brigade! |
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| Wyatt enjoying his dessert! |
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| At some point, he snuck the entire bag of Cheeto's and decided to eat them inside the wagon! When his buddy Jack asked for a few, Wyatt was more than happy to share. :) |
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| Isabel giving her friend Dario instruction while Roman takes his turn on June. |
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| TUG! |
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| At the end, my crew was still alive and kickin'! The kids had such a good time!! |
