His Seventh Birthday

June 07, 2017

His Seventh Birthday

It occurs to me today that I never blogged about his 7th birthday. There are a couple of reasons for this. One - he's getting to the age that if he knew I did this I'm not sure he'd like it. Two - May. All the May. May is the silent killer of the school year.

But it was one of my better parties so I wanted to post about it so when I go back through the blog for the 2017 scrapbook I don't forget it!

So obviously he choose Pokemon for his "theme." I'm not theme-y. Really. I sort of am only in that helps give direction and focus. And I'm type A enough that when planning that helps. And he kept saying "I want a pokemon party." Which I would quickly correct ... "its a playdate, not a party."

Why the distinction?

Because party implies his friends will all bring him gifts, or that I'm inviting a slew of people. And I expressly said "no gifts" (many did not listen) and he only invited four friends (and their siblings). Which is not a hardship for him, that last one. So anyway he invited two friends from school, his one friend from prek, and his family friend. And fun was had.

I'm not on pinterest much. But it is useful for printables and ideas so I searched "pokemon birthday party" and this link (and a bunch of others) came up. I did what I liked and skipped what I didn't and twisted some others. I'm handy with photoshop so I did make all the kids their own trainer cards (complete with their pictures) and then I got a bunch of pokemon stickers and they put pokemon they wanted to train on their cards and that took like a solid 20min. Anyway I'm getting off track.

So while we waited for kids to arrive we "chose" (a big deal in this whole pokemon thing) your pokemon's and colored them. I printed out about 20 coloring pages and they choose from those. And they picked pokemon for their trainer cards too. So on these trainer cards I picked four "badges" they were going to earn at the party. I don't remember what they were. But I picked four and then we did activities and they earned them. I did have to do a fair amount of googling into pokemon and what badges are and how trainers earn stuff. We don't watch the show here because it's Y7 and most of our house isn't old enough for it.

Plus. I hate anime type animation. So that's a no son.

Anyway these kids colored and chatted about pokemon and stickers for about 30-40 minutes. It was magical.

After that we moved on to agility training. Which was carrying a poke ball on a spoon around the house (it was raining) relay style. We did this like 3 times.

Then pin the tail on pikachu. We did this twice. Not sure which badge this was.

A tray of chick fil a for lunch.

The effort it took to get this party together (about 2-3 hours all together) was totally worth it because he just loved it. Every bit.

The next thing we did was a scavenger hunt. I made clues and Team Rocket stole pikachu from Ash and Team Mystic (good guys) had to find him and defeat Team Rocket (bad guys). I learned a lot during my research, ya'll.

At the end of four clues that took them around the house they found a bunch of pikachu's (which were actually given to David for Christmas) frozen in a cube of ice. Which we took outside and smashed with a hammer.

Then there was cake. In which I attempted a poke ball cake by myself. This was the melt the icing and pour over the cake method. It went pretty well, considering my complete lack of cake decorating skills. But this cake cost maybe $8.

I also bought bunny peeps and dipped their ears in chocolate to make little pikachus which were a big hit.

Party started at 10 was over by 12:30 and my house wasn't totally destroyed. WINNING. I spent money, but probably $100 less than if I booked a jump place. With only a few kids I was able to buy everyone Pokemon Hats which were a big hit and some made in China poke balls. I gave everyone some poke cards too because we have too many and it was great fun.

Next up in the party department is David and I did book him a jump place, because I wanted to and we've never done that for him. Grady has had two parties (4th and 6th birthdays) at "places" and D never has. And D gets carted around so much and shuffled and I have guilt. Julia won't get a party next year and G will probably get another birthday playdate in the spring and a party when he turns 9 or 10. Not sure. I'm still navigating the birthday thing. We make a big deal at the house and they get to bring treats to my mind that's enough. But we get invited to some ELABORATE birthdays. With Disney characters and two bounce houses, pools, full catering. I mean it's like a crazy thing. I want to celebrate my kids but not like over the top. Hard to balance.