End of the Holiday Season

Our holiday season is long. It seems to start in September when we celebrate Sophie and Henry's birthdays. Then we have my birthday and Halloween in October and then it seems Christmas starts creeping in sometime in November somewhere around Thanksgiving and sticks around a very long time and then finally the season ends with Ian's birthday which is 13 days after Christmas (He has been telling people his birthday is 13 days after Christmas rather than the date lately). Today I can officially say it is done. We had the big birthday party and all is right with the world. Thank goodness!

Here is the cake.

I wasn't very creative. It is just a swirl cake in a bunt pan shape. I stuck a few Indiana Jones lego guys on the top and Ian was thrilled!

As the kids arrived we started with painting. They each had a little wooden segmented snake they got to paint.
This is actually a great time using activity. It took at least 30 min for all the kids to be done. As they finished they went into the boys room and played trains or legos or something.

We then started our games. They were each given an Indiana Jones bag that I had made. (Hurray for after Christmas fabric sales. I was able to make all 16 bags for about 15 dollars. The most expensive part was the straps.) The bags were filled with a few tools or toys the kids would either use later or just get to take home.

In their bags they had to find a hieroglyphics key or translator and then use it to to find their names on a cartouche. For this age group this was actually a bit of a challenge. Most of them are just beginning readers. Some had started school and others haven't had any.

Next we found a big stash of gold and jewels but they were covered with poisonous snakes and bugs. The kids were split into teams and then took turns using little grabber tools, they had in their bag, to pick out the treasure and fill their teams jar. The jewels were just some gold chocolate coins and some red and silver foil covered chocolate balls (Thank you after Christmas sales). When the candy was exhausted and the kids were done we measured to see which team won and then added the spoils to the pinata that would come later.

We used a few gold coins to play an Indiana Jones version of pin the tail on the donkey. This time they were trying to fill Indiana's bag with gold. I am actually quite proud of this poster. I drew the lego figure Indiana just an hour or so before the party. My husband outlined my drawing with markers and suddenly we had another game. Ian loves it and it now hangs on the wall in his room. We thought about coloring it in but liked it just outlined.

My kids think it is required to have a pinata. It would be like not having cake or something if we didn't have a pinata. We tried to make one earlier in the week but it failed miserably. I ended up buying this one. Ian chose a boot. I don't think it really mattered since none of the pinatas at the store really fit our theme. The kids had fun hitting it and it actually broke open this time. Often we end up having to break it open for them. I guess our kids our getting older and can really give these pinatas a whack.



Then we ate cake.


Opened gifts. (Ian got tons of new legos! Two boys gave him some bakugan guys. I don't know anything about these. I guess we will find out!? And a bunch of other things. Thank you everyone!)

And then we played another game while we waited for parents to arrive. This was a version of musical chairs that I made up. I used my Hullabaloo pads and the kids had to walk around the room and when the music stopped one child ended up in the mush pot. But they got to choose the way that the rest had to walk. They could choose to make them walk backward, sideways, hop, crabwalk or whatever. As the kids got out they enjoyed picking something silly for the others to have to do as they walked around the room.

By the time we had ended this game it was time the parents were here and the kids were excited to show them all the fun things in their bags. There was a lot of energy in the room and all were very happy.

The most amazing thing of the whole event was that Molly went to sleep about 5 minutes before the party started and slept through the entire thing.

That was the perfect gift to Mom! I had thought I would end up with her in the sling during the party but somehow it was planned just right and she didn't wake up. Even with all 15 kids bouncing around and having a great time.

It was a great party and I am so glad it is over. I am taking a huge sigh of relief. The holiday season is now over and I can relax a bit.