Our third (and final) birthday for the month of May was a massive success, but not the one we had initially planned.
Xavier turned 6 years old on Sunday, and it isn’t often the kids get to have a party on the day of their actual birthday, so we had a good one planned. Only thing is the weather had other plans. What was going to be a fun indoor and outdoor party wound up being an exclusively indoor affair. This in itself wasn’t bad, but we had to make some adjustments.
Most of what we had planned still made the party, but the timeline and emphasis shifted.
A few days before I made a trip up to The LEGO Store and picked up enough pieces for each guest to build a custom minifigure. As each guest arrived we had them decorate a paper bag, putting their name on it, then going to another station to build their minifigure. They kept their minifigure in the bag and all the bags were kept for safekeeping in the kitchen while the kids did other activities.
First there was a round of free-play. We have enough LEGO pieces that a large group of kids can simply find enough to build with.
But then after a little while, we went on to what what one of the centerpieces of the party. Each team of kids had to build a race car. We may have a lot of LEGOs but not enough to give every kid a full set of wheels and axles. There were teams of two or three and this is where all of the older kids really helped out (you may remember my mentioning earlier a couple of August’s friends has spent the night).
I had built a short track, which was essentially a spare piece of scrap particle board spray pained with six square wooden dowels glued on. What was planned for something a bit more elaborate and outdoors turned into a shorter indoor event. Well, shorter in distance but not in time and excitement.
After the racing heats everybody repaired downstairs for some more free build time. Then it was on to the tower competition. Who could make the largest freestanding tower in a set amount of time?
Xavier wasn’t as interested in making a tower.
On to the cake. I alluded to this in my previous post, but let me elaborate a little more here. We went in on Wednesday to order the cake. Xavier picked it out, as the birthday child always gets to pick out their own cake. Flavor, decorations, whatever. I was to pick up the cake at 10am on Sunday, which would give us plenty of time before the party started at 1. Only I was running late. It wasn’t until almost noon when I got to Fred Meyer to pick up the cake. And it was the wrong cake. It was plain with “Happy Birthday Xavier” on it and none of the decoration he had picked out. I started panicking, and I admit it wasn’t one of my better moments. Turns out the person taking the order had done a poor job and the person I was picking the cake up from, a different employee, had decorated the cake as (improperly) instructed. “What was it you had ordered?” she asked and I pointed to the Captain America picture and explained this was for my 6 year old’s birthday party. She said she would be able to fix it in a little while, maybe 20 minutes. I said I was already running late and needed it in 10. I also said that it didn’t matter if the lines were fuzzy or whatever, it just needed to approximate the picture and if the lines weren’t straight or anything small was wrong I wouldn’t complain. Because I wasn’t sure how the cake would turn out I picked up a small Captain America figure to place on top. 10 minutes later I was handed the cake and it was a little sloppy but it was good enough and that is all I wanted.
Remember those bags the kids decorated at the beginning of the party? The one they put their minifigure in? We had a pinata. It was supposed to be outside, but I wound up attaching it to the end of a broom and having the kids pull the strings in the front room. Yes, it was a string pinata, not one to be hit with a stick because these are preschoolers and the last thing we need is small kids with implements of destruction. It was tough holding the pinata, but it worked, and when it opened up each kid filled their bag with its contents.
Most everybody left after this and whoever was left simply played with LEGO blocks until they were picked up. All told, it was a successful party.
One of the things we like to do is have the kids think of a charity they would like to gather donations for rather than have their guests obligated to bring gifts. For this one Xavier chose food for the homeless. Here he is helping to deliver the food his guests brought to the St. Vincent de Paul pantry.
