Cam's Birthday, Part 2

After 4 years of birthday parties and just knowing my kids in general, it's obvious to me that while Maggie loves to be the life of the party, Cam just likes to be with his core group of friends. So my original plan was to have a small, but special birthday party for him at our house.* And with his Lego/Ninja obsession, I started looking at Ninago Party ideas. I got a huge amount of help and inspiration from these two blog posts at the Isoms blog and Movie Muse.

We averted a crisis when Cam woke up at 2:30 AM the morning before his party throwing up. And then again at 4:30. But then he was done, and thankfully, as it was such a small party, almost everyone could still attend if we moved it to Sunday. One kid canceled (his parents were afraid he would catch the bug) and Cam was more worried that we wouldn't have the full 5 ninja contingent than to worry that his friend couldn't come. He asked Maggie if she would stand in. And she was delighted to get to be with the boys! And thank god - because I had planned for her to go somewhere else on Saturday (because if she was here she would have wanted to be involved in the party, and Cam was very specific that it should be only 5 ninjas). But I had no alternatives for Sunday. It all worked out!

The first thing was to make the dining room look 'Ninja cool'. I used the Won Ton font (size 200) to freezer paper stencil a birthday banner:

A friend made a sweet ninja cake:

The party was at 2, so I didn't have much food. I got cheap, primary color bowls from the dollar store for pretzels, Doritos and cheese balls. Movie Muse shared all her printables, to enable me to make these cool water bottles and Ninja Power Boost packets (Kool Aid with a fun label).

And the big deal. The long sleeve tee shirts. Because you can make them into a ninja mask! Each kid got to pick what color he was (and that was the color water bottle they got too). HUGE HIT!

Here is a close up of Cam as the Green Ninja:

And the rest of the team (Maggie is the red ninja, love how she strikes a pose)

After the masks were on, they started training. First was the 'lazer' obstacle course. This was SUCH a big hit (and a fun, easy rainy day activity). They wanted to go through a bunch of times, and after all the training was done, asked to make it harder (thank god I had more crepe paper!)

Then they went downstairs to the garage where the training continued. They had plastic swords, foam nun chucks, and rubber throwing stars - all marked with tape the same color at their masks, so it was easy to tell whose was whose). Sensai Dad took them through the paces, which included training and then practice (by knocking down solo cups)

Maggie was also an expert at this (Cam was too fast to get any non-blurry pictures!)

After this, the kids picked up the boxes, and underneath Aaron had taped helium balloons to the floor and let them just go at it. I couldn't believe that some of the kids managed to pop the balloons with the plastic swords!

To end the training, Aaron presented Cam with a Golden Mask (another long sleeve tee shirt) because his friends helped him reach his 'full potential'. He was overjoyed.

Then we let them just play around with the weapons in the garage for a while, but when they started to get crazy in the 'dojo' - I lead them back upstairs to play Fruit Ninja on the x-box while I got the cake ready.

All in all, the party was a HUGE success. Although it looks like a lot of work, since I planned it so ahead of time, I was able to space all the DIY stuff out (except the banner. The banner was a last minute decision of a crazed mother). And the setup was quick - and this age group was the perfect fit for it. They would help pick up the solo cups for the next person, and patiently wait for their turn (only Maggie would get upset that she wanted to go again.). It was awesome.

* I usually have a group of neighborhood friends over for dinner on the actual birthday night. But we've made new friends in the neighborhood, and now that means I would have had 13 kids plus parents in my house. Hell. No. Which is why we moved it to McDs. And then, I just invited his school buddies too. It was great.