Birthday Bash, Part2

First of all, I found out that I posted the same baby twice instead of one of each of my friend, Ruth's, twins! So I've fixed it now - one of each!

So, after the pancake toss, the great Cotton Ball Race was next. In this game, you hold a spoon in your mouth, and there's a cotton ball on the spoon. You go as fast as you can with out dropping the cotton ball off the spoon, and once you make it around the bucket and back to your team, the next member goes until each person on the team has finished. Here's some great photos the race:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Everyone is ready!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="The Race is On"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Jessica Helps Malia"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Oops - that silly cotton ball jumped off the spoon!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Almost halfway!"][/caption]

The next event was the Jump Rope Contest!  We divided the kids up by size/gender so there was room to jump - here's some of the action:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Zoe's levitating!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="That girl's got some serious air!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Can you tell who missed?"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Who says white boys can't jump!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="These girls can jump too!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="The boys got some serious air too!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="The "big" boys outdid everyone though - these three just kept going and going - we even went really fast and they kept going!  For some reason, Wes won - I'm sure his firefighter training helped out on this one!"][/caption]

The next event was the "triathalon" - not a three part event, but you had to have either three feet or three heads!  This meant either you had two people with the legs tied together to make three feet, or one big person carrying two little people, making three heads - here's some of the triathalon competitors:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="This group is going to be 3-headed"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Three heads again - Jonathan holding Zoe and Mordecai is on the back!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Three legs here - you go girls!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Jonathan is in there somewhere!  See, I told you it was Mordecai in the back!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Three legs here too!  I think Boaz is enjoying himself!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Three heads this time - but I'm not sure whose legs those are!  Christian is carrying Tucker, I think?!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="I believe there's a fireman under those cute girls!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Adelia is giving some helpful instruction to these newbies to the art of the three legged race!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Perfect Synchronization here!"][/caption]

The hoola hoop race came next,  (it was on the driveway to get the kids out of sight while the treasure hunt riddles were hidden), and the treasure hunt was kids just running everywhere and massive confusion when the wrong riddles where in the wrong place...I still have no idea how I messed up so badly on that one! Then it was the invention game - each team found a bin of "stuff" at the end of the treasure hunt and had to create an invention that they had to "sell" to a group of judges.  This was really fun and each team did a great job - here's a few pics of that one:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Can you hear the cogs turning - this is serious brain activity here!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="This was a funny invention - an arrow shooter, plus a potato head target (off screen, but that's what they are laughing about!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Here's the old potato launcher!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="And this one was last, but best - a blow gun that actually worked!"][/caption]

And then while the BBQ was BBQing,  Jeff led the kids in some really fun round of musical chair with his AWESOME guitar playing - he even had the kids count the beat to start (1, 2, 3, 4...)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Round and Round we go...When we'll stop, nobody Knows!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Who's out of a chair??"][/caption]

After that, it was time to eat.  Then after everyone had gotten a belly full - we had burgers, hot dogs, salads, chips, watermelon, vegies, juice, and of course Birthday Cake from Costco...Yum!!!

Lastly, we pulled out all the stops and had a great carnival, complete with a prize booth!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="The ducks even matched the ducky pool - "][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="This was a very popular game as you always won something!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Jessica was dishing out the Snow Cones "][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="We also had a balloon Pop game! "][/caption]

Then everyone went home with their goodies, we spent a while cleaning up (thanks to the VanderPols for helping so much with that).  Also I want to thanks the moms who helped in the kitchen, the dad's who played with babies, the moms who watched over Esther, and all the kids for being such great kids all day!

Phew!  I think it took almost as long to post about this party as it did to host it!  Not really, but there were soooo many great photos, that I just had to use lots of them!

Until next year!

PS - I've decided that next year, and subsequent years, will not be as elaborate and will definitely NOT be held on the day before we leave for camping!  I do plan to have a theme for each party though - only 11 months to figure out what next years theme will be!

The First Annual Big Birthday Bash, Part 1

This party was huge!  I've had parties with nearly this many kids before (remember the one last spring with 40 some kids?), but this one had about the same number of kids (at dinner the head count was a little over 40), but there were a lot more parents staying for the fun - we had a little over 20 adults present!

The really big part was how much planning/games/fun we did!  There were 3 parts to this party - team games, BBQ dinner, and then a Carnival!

I'm going to share some of the party tonight, but there's so many great photos and things that happened, that I'm going to break it up into a couple of posts!

First, here's some great people photos (my dear friend, Renee, was our official photographer for the party, and she was gracious enough to let me have all the photos after the party for my own personal use!  She is so great at people pics! - check out her new website for her new business, Little Earthling Photography !  Congrats Renee! And thanks for all the great photos - now I REALLY want a new camera!)

First, here's the babies that were present - totally ignored the proceedings, but they served as great entertainment for the adults:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="397" caption="Esther"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Caleb"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Zeke"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Elizabeth"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Josh"][/caption]

Are those some of the cutest babies in the world or what???  They were all born within 3 months of each

other!

And here's some pics of bigger kids waiting for the action to begin:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Dayton - already had face painting, as you can see"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Elizabeth - post face painting too!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Hezekiah - doesn't seem too impressed with the party so far!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Jubilee - one of the most photogenic children I've ever seen "][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Kellina"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Rachel and Kalina"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Rebekah and Keziah"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Zoe"][/caption]

Ok, so now that you've gotten to meet some of the "players", we'll get into the fun stuff - team games!  We divided all the kids up into 4 teams - lined them up by age and counted them off into teams.  Then the teams nominated a captain or two and lined up for the games.  We had some late comers, but we just added them to teams as best we could to keep things as fair as possible.  We were working with kids from 2 - 25!  We were in good hands though, as the oldest team member is an EMT from the Ferndale Fire Department - he was such a good team captain and for some reason seemed right at home in some of the events (like where he got to carry two kids in a relay race, and jumping rope!).  Everybody was so helpful and encouraging...it was good to see kids of all ages work so well together!

The first game was the pancake toss - you had to toss a pancake from you flimsy paper plate over your head for the person behind you to catch it on their plate - if it was dropped the same people had to try again until success.  Once the pancake reached the back of the line, the last person ran to the front and started it again...over and over until the first front person ran back to the front!  Here's some great pics of the action:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Wes and Jonathan Demonstrating"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="On Your Mark"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Get Set"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Go!!!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Up and Over"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Catch It"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Ok everyone, let"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Nice and Easy"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Help"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="The Big Toss to Keziah"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Scary toss to Jessica"][/caption]

Well, I had hoped to get more games in tonight, but my computer/connection is realy giving me fits - so I'll have to continue another day - stay tuned!

Have a blessed day!