When our kids turn ten, they get a big birthday party. ("Big" being relative. Usually they just get to invite one friend over for the night.) Zane's tenth birthday is tomorrow, and so yesterday was his big birthday party. He's been looking forward to this party for literally months - he was already trying to hammer out details with me back before Christmas.
He decided that he'd like to have a Lego party ("But not everything needs to be Legos, Mom. I want to just have some normal games too!") He and i went to the party store to search for any actual Lego plates or napkins or anything, but there was no Lego anything anywhere. And so we got creative. We decided to just go with Lego colors - red and yellow and blue and green being the primary Lego colors - and got tablecloths and plates and napkins and silverware in those colors. And then we bought yellow plastic cups and yellow balloons, and Beth helped me turn both of those things into awesome Lego faces that turned out way cuter than i'd actually anticipated. And, just to make sure that the Lego theme was obvious, i had the kids build some silverware and napkin holders out of Legos. (They were all, "Can we give them eyes?" and i was all, "YES! Make them look awesome!" And they did!)
As people arrived, they guessed how many Legos were in a jar (most of the kids were hilariously far off, and my dad ultimately won, so we declared an adult AND a child winner) and made Lego cars to race. Juanito built a huge, amazing track for the cars to race down. We were originally supposed to be racing outside, but it had been raining and was threatening more rain, so we moved the track inside instead.
And then we ate lunch, with a menu specifically chosen by Zane: Hot dogs and macaroni and cheese and baby carrots and green apples and cantaloupe and wavy potato chips. He was especially excited about the wavy potato chips.
And then more games! We tossed legos at a target that kind of looked like skeeball. We played Pin-the-head-on-the-Lego-Man. We gave everyone an ice cube with a Lego inside of it, and they had to melt the ice cube to free the Lego.
And then we brought out the dart board. When i originally had this idea, i told Juanito, "So...i want to have a dart board where kids can throw darts at balloons and pop them. What can we use for darts?" and he went outside and made four of the deadliest-looking darts i have ever seen. Compared to these darts, lawn darts look like fluffy marshmallows. They're basically nails that he's sharpened into points and then added a handle to. But they worked!
So anyone who knows Zane knows that he loves candy. He does NOT, however, love pinatas, because of the whole "rush forward and fight over the candy on the ground" aspect. So instead, we stuffed a whole ton of balloons with candy, and then let everyone pop one balloon and collect whatever was inside. It actually worked really, really well.
And then the obstacle course, where they had to walk up a pallet and leap off, shoot some ping pong balls off pop bottles with a squirt gun, run through tires, climb through hula hoops while walking a balance beam, throw a beach ball through another hula hoop, crawl under and jump over some boards, walk a Z-shaped balance beam, and then hop and walk backwards to the finish line. It was awesome, except that some people had a really hard time with the ping pong ball shooting.
And then cake - which Beth helped me make, and which we were both pretty proud of - and presents, and we ended almost exactly at the time we were supposed to end. Yay!!!
Zane totally had fun, and i think everyone else did too, so i declare it a roaring success!
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