I had fun at Marek’s birthday party. I sincerely believe that he and all his friends did as well! Marcus and I picked up eight kids plus Marek after school and brought them all home. We played home made Pictionary which is always pretty hysterical. They voted for no time limit which is cool.
The artist and the random guessers! They are a great bunch of kids actually. Strangely nice and polite. Almost every kid said, “Thanks!” and each offered to help at one point or another. Since we have basketball practice at 7:30 am, only the basketball boys were invited to spend the night. Everyone else went home at 10pm. Whew! Full night! Fun times though!
I thought I’d share a few one birthday party tip. After 11 birthday parties for kids, I’m feeling like an expert! Ha! My tip is: KEEP ‘EM BUSY!! While I love free wild crazy chaotic insane play as much as the next mom, my house just isn’t the best spot for ten kids to run around like maniacs! I usually plan ahead for some games that they will like. Pictionary has been a hit for a few years. I just make up cards with fairly concrete and descriptive words – basketball, baseball etc. Then I throw in some hard ones - “Wizard of Oz”. The kids love it for almost a half an hour every time. They take turns and yell insanely.
After that, we do team builders or communication games. (Google – the answer to “where to find team building games”) This year I pulled up some games from the TV show “Minute to Win it”. Pretty fun, you can check them out here Minute to Win it!. Not as creative as I’ve been in the past but easy and cool. My favorite was the “Junk in the Trunk” game where they had to shake all the ping pong balls out of a tissue box belted to their butts! No hands! A favorite from last year, was the “build a tower” game. I randomly assigned them to teams then gave each team the same supplies and told them to build a tower. The supplies were 5 marshmallows, as much raw spaghetti as they wanted, 5 inches of tape and some other stuff I can’t remember! Basically told them to build a tower in 15 minutes. The tallest and most stable tower was the winner. They loved it!
I also took advantage of the party to experiment with the telephoto lens on the school camera (which I borrowed – Nikon Digital SLR my normal camera is cool and awesome but is not an SLR and doesn’t have a telephoto lens.) SO… all the shots here are examples of my results…
I almost forgot, “Chocolate Unicorn”! They had to stack four mini donuts on their forehead – whoever could hold a stack of four for three seconds won! They could only use one hand and they could have one helper handing them the donuts. Hilarious! It took numerous tries!
At ten thirty the non-basketball team left and the basketball boys bedded down in the living room and watched a movie. The last noise was around 1am. Woke ‘em all up at the crack of dawn (6:30) fed ‘em some mufflettes (recipe to follow – coulda sworn I’d posted it before but no) and sent them away! Party in a day! Hope you can put my tip to use. Basically, the house looks pretty good the next day when you keep ‘em busy because there is always a “clean up” period after games. It’s wonderful to hear them ask to help out! Marek has a great group of friends. I was impressed (again) with their kind words, generosity, helpfulness (Dayton even vacuumed!) and overall good manners! Slam dunk followed by a full day of frozen vegetation!! Hope your next birthday involves shaking your butt till your box is empty!! Thanks for stopping by today, talk to you later!
Denise
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