David is officially six and this year he asked if he could please, please, please have a BIG birthday party like when he turned three so he could have ALL of his friends over one last time before we have to move. How could I say no to such well aimed military child induced parenting guilt?
Touché, David, touché.
Henry spent the majority of the party by the snack table gorging himself on cheeseballs--a former staple of my college diet which are always available for birthday parties at the Reintjes house. He probably ate half that bowl.
I know David, that makes mommy feel a little sick too.......
David requested a geocaching party--well actually he requested a geocaching/Star Wars/Harry Potter party but I didn't have the energy to make that happen, plus adding lightsabers and wands to the mix of this particular group of children would have probably pushed us into the area of complete loss of control as opposed to the just mostly out of control level we were able to maintain.
Instead of trying to use GPS coordinates to hide our boxes like real official geocaches we decided to take more of a letterboxing approach and write out clues based on compass directions and landmarks. And yes, with eleven children aged 9 to 18 months participating in the hunt it was just as much like herding cats as you are imagining. The kids loved it though! They each got a little notebook to stamp once they found each box and Chris even filled some up with tiny dinosaurs because he thinks letterboxing is not as fun as geocaching solely because the former doesn't involve finding junky plastic toys and the later does :) I also put a little primer on geocaching and letterboxing on the front page of each of their notebooks in case anyone's parents wanted to continue on the treasure hunting adventure later.
Once the hunt was over and all the children were officially 110 degrees and drenched in sweat we retreated inside the house for cake and air conditioning. David asked for strawberry cake again this year and it turned out delicious. Apparently I should have made two because this one wasn't enough to go around. Henry said he would eat the cake but only if it was chocolate because he only likes chocolate cake.....it's so hard to not be the birthday boy.......
After presents we moved back out to brave the heat and bust open the pinata I made. This time David wanted a "mad bird/Harry Potter" pinata but again....no, just no. He got a number six pinata because sixes are easy to construct and don't involve paper mache.
It was a little sad to see so much work bashed to pieces in such a short time--although due to my superior cardboard building skills it did take quite a bit of wacking to get to the candy.......
Since it was one of our parties the guests hung around for the entire rest of the afternoon just playing and talking. And since so many people were still here toward evening and it was actually Chris's birthday anyway we decided to sing to him and give him his presents too.
Who doesn't want a fake owl for their thirty-second birthday?
I think everyone had fun and David was beside himself all day so I'm going to go ahead and declare this party a resounding success, and maybe go take a nap :)