We've been alternating birthday parties for a few years now since I don't have the mental energy to throw full blown parties for this many children every time, but this year Henry really wanted a full blown party--and since his party desires coincided with my desires to get to know our new neighbors better I figured we should go for it. He wanted basically the same party he had when he turned five, except instead of a "war guy" theme he asked for a "Revolutionary War" theme.
I guess that's what happens when you move down the street from Mount Vernon.
We attempted to play capture the flag with the addition of weaponized marshmallows-dipped-in-flour. I divided the kids into teams of Red Coats, Colonists and medics and they set to work building forts out of random things in our yard. Lucky for them we have a lot of random pieces of brick/wood/pallets/other bits of detritus in our yard. They made some pretty epic forts. Once the forts were constructed the kids started playing capture the flag which degenerated pretty quickly into some sort of game that involved mostly running around the yard and pelting each other with marshmallows with the occasional dirty flour marshmallow snack break. I'm sure there were rules of some sort or a goal of some kind. I didn't really care, the kids all played happily until I realized it was fifteen minutes until the party was supposed to end and called them back for cake eating and pinata wacking. I call that a party success!
Originally I wasn't going to make a pinata at all, but when Henry looked at me with his big sad eyes, what could I do? I felt a little bad about hitting an American flag with a bat but I thought the British flag would be too tricky to make, what with all the diagonals and all. Don't worry, the children were very respectful as they broke the flag to pieces and shoved each other to the ground in their attempts to collect all the candy they could for themselves.
It's every man for himself on the battle field.
Overall it was a pretty good party if I do say so myself, and I think we made a good impression on the neighbors to boot. Henry even had so much fun he didn't have one complaint all day, which was basically a birthday miracle :)
Also, I can't believe my little guy is already seven.