Round Up at Butler Ranch

This year, to celebrate Emily's 8th birthday, we had a cowgirl party at our house. Emily invited some great friends over to share in an afternoon of fun! We started by dressing the part of cowgirls -- with pink cowgirl hats and pink bandanas. Each girl picked a "brand" to wear on their cheek or hand, and were divided into teams for games depending on which brand they chose. We played a relay race with stick horses, lassoed a stuffed horse, stacked sugar cubes and hunted cowboy and Indian figurines. Then Emily opened gifts, which included many nice hand-drawn cards. Cake, ice cream, pretzels and Sunny-D filled our bellies before playing outside and riding a horse. Special thanks to Sandy for bringing over horses to highlight the party with rides. Guests went home with their hats, bandanas, bracelets and cowgirl cookie mixes. I hope the day is filled with memories that Emily will cherish for a long time. 

Here is the birthday girl, having a super special birthday party.

And the location of her party -- our "ranch" for the day!

We corralled a few horses on her cake. 

And cowgirl cookie mixes for all our guests to take home!

We had two teams of cowgirls ready to race their (stick) horses!

It was a close race!

We had a lassoing competition to see who could capture our fearless horse with a hula hoop!

Horses love sugar cubes, so we played a game to stack sugar cubes.

Sandy brought Laketa and Natasha over to try sugar cubes. What beautiful horses, and what a special friend Sandy is to us. Thank you, Sandy, for making a dream come true for Emily.

Emily waiting patiently for her ride on Laketa. She wanted all of her guests to ride first.