Jarem's Birthday Party!

Jarem finally got his first friend birthday party! Our others kids all had their first friend birthday party at age 4, and Jarem was turning 7 so we figured it was time.  Being the youngest, he sometimes misses out on friend activities because we are always so busy with the older ones activities, but don't worry, he gets an excess of attention to make up for it! :)

Anyway, he only invited 6 boys from school because we wanted to keep it small, and only 4 could make it.  It was pretty last minute notice because he kept forgetting to give the invitations out at school, so I was glad that he had 4.  Don't feel bad for him though, 4 was PLENTY!  I forgot how rambunctious boys that age can be when they get together. :)

They started by playing pin the light saber on Yoda.  Jesikah drew Yoda and he was pretty amazing!

 Then we had a treasure hunt.  I put Alex and Eric in charge of the treasure hunt and they did a great job!! They decided to do a voice treasure hunt, so Eric recorded the clues in a Yoda voice on Alex's phone and then they hooked it into our home stereo system and projected them outside to the speakers outside on the deck.  The boys LOVED it!

This was definitely their favorite game of the party, especially because once they found their treasure (which were light-up mini-light sabers), Darth Vader showed up!!  It was awesome, (if I say so myself) Eric turned on the Darth Vader music...da da da dum de dum dum de dum...you get the idea.  And the boys started looking around everywhere for Darth Vader. 

Then Darth Vader comes out the patio door (Alex in all black and a Darth Vader mask).  The boys were SO excited! Alex didn't have a red light saber, but I told him to just use a different color.  I guess he decided on this big red inflatable bat instead, which I thought was a bit odd, but he said he didn't want to hurt the boys. 

Anyway, it didn't matter to the kids, they immediately started attacking him with their light sabers and he went down without much of a fight.  In fact, after he went down, they kept trying to get him and take off his mask til I finally rescued him.  Alex was definitely the hero for the rest of the day.  They kept trying to search him out. Even Alex said he wished we would have thrown him a party like this when he was that age. 

Then the boys had to find a dark place to enjoy their glowing light sabers.  The stairs going to the basement was the place they found.

Next up was Star Wars Bingo:

Then on to Yoda sodas (green sherbet in Sprite), and cake and presents! They loved the Yoda sodas, but there was tons of cake leftover.  In fact, no one at the party including our kids would eat the chocolate cupcakes(and half were chocolate), so Eric ended up taking them to work on Monday and that worked out.

 Jarem opening presents:

He loved this card from Braden Hunter with the pop-out dog.

His friends know him well.  He also loved this double-sided Nerf sword which can also be 2 swords

Yes, that boy put up his arm and blocked Jarem, but you can still see the red light-up light saber that Alex could have used for Darth Vader.

 Batman Legos

And Star Wars Legos from Braden Ecklund

I don't think there has ever been a party I have planned that we have had EXTRA time.  Usually we always run out of time, so I planned it for 2 hours and planned 4 main activities.  Well, we had almost 45 minutes to spare and I was going to put on a Star Wars Clone Wars episode, but they wanted to have free play time, so I went downstairs with them to play.  And what was worse, one of the parents came back to hang out for the second half of the party (not good timing). Let's just say, I should have put on the movie because they were so wild and crazy wanting to jump off the furniture and wrestle and destroy the room.  I even tried to get them involved in a few games like duck, duck, goose, and the animal game, but they only lasted a few minutes and then it was back to the craziness! Needless to say, I couldn't have been more happy when 3:00 came and the parents showed up.   Whew! I was worn out.