December 05, 2009

Zach's Bday party

Today we celebrated Zach's birthday party. He invited 13 friends. Two couldn't make it. The ones who made it: Jake, Ethan, Max, David, Luke, Adam, Aidan, Jeremy, Sam, Nick. They were so loud and crazy. Constantly jumping on another another. John had a bunch of games planned, similar to last year. They started out with playing with lego's.John broke them up into different teams for each game.
The first game the boys played was the Mummy game. Who can wrap their partner up with toilet paper faster and use the whole roll?

The boys found the ones who went slower and steadier won. Else the toilet paper kept breaking.



The next game was taking this long piece of twine that was tied to a spoon. The boys were split into two teams. The first person in the team had to take the yarn spoon and snake it down their shirt and then pass it to the next person who had to do the same. When it got to the end of the line, they had to then untangle themselves.


The third game, the teams had to see who could keep a feather off the floor the longest by blowing on it.


One hilarious game was a dress-up relay race. There were two paper bags full of clothes - John's socks, my pajama pants, John's shirts, Zach's hockey jersey, Zach's winter hats, and my scarves.

The first person in the team had to put on all the clothes properly and then run around the house and then tag the next person who had to put on all the clothes. Total chaos. Very funny to watch. Everyone trying to help one another to put on clothes. One person putting on socks on to the team mate, while another team mate was trying to get the shirt untangled. The rest of the teammates are yelling stuff like "Faster! Faster! Put on the sock! Get it on!"





One game was outside - Basketball shots. While the boys were outside with John, I got the next game ready which was throwing pennies, nickels, and a few quarters all over the kitchen floor and under the dining room table. I didn't watch this one since I went to get the pizza, but John had them all scramble to pick up as much money as possible in a certain amount of time. We then added up each cup of coins to determine the winner. One kid said he only picked up dimes. Another one said he found a quarter. Those were the two that won this game. The kids got to keep the money they found.
John also had the kids take shots on him with a hockey puck and soft rubber ball. Max and Jeremy both got 2 out of 5 in the goal. Zach, Aidan, Adam, Luke, and David all got one goal. The final game was who could make the tallest free-standing tower out of gumdrops and toothpicks. Last time we did this with newspaper and tape. That seemed a little too difficult for second graders. This time, it was pretty easy. The tallest tower went to Zach and Jake at 14 inches. Next was Aidan and then Sam. Afterwards, the kids decided to make a maze and stick their towers together. It's still on our kitchen table. Aidan was the last to leave the party and he said to leave the maze. He told Zach to try and roll a ball through it. It's pretty funny. I love that they were so creative. Plus at this age, they're all still polite and listen. Yeah, they were screaming and jumping on one another, having pillow fights with my couch cushions.
Winners earned points on a chart. The winner got to pick a prize from a bunch of toys and candy we bought. The biggest prize cost $20. It's funny but the cost of the toys doesn't mean that much to the kids at this age. One of the boys had a choice between some lego sets and remote control cars and he chose a giant KitKat bar.
The final scoreboard

Here's a video of the kids singing happy birthday.. which then turned into a kid-generated smoke alarm.



All in all, considering nothing was broken, no one was hurt, and everyone went home happy, I say it was a pretty successful party.
For gifts, Z got lots of money which he was happy about, plus some gift cards, a game, a nerf gun, and a bionicle lego creature. Plus he picked a robot car out of the prize stash.