My little boy is 7-years-old!
To celebrate, we had planned a morning-to-night birthday Saturday — with family in the morning, friends in the afternoon, and a couple friends staying over night. BUT THEN: Ear infection sneak-attack the night before the party. Arg!
At the last second, had to push the friends/sleepover party back a week (with lots of phone calls at 10:30-at-night to attendees’ parents, *awkward*). Luckily we kept the “family” party as planned, so it wasn’t a total destructo-bummer for the birthday boy, who had been waiting in great anticipation of epic-birthday-party-day. Still had grammas, grampas, aunt & uncle, presents and decorations — and I forced the dozen family members there to eat the 4-dozen cupcakes I had prepared for the weekend. Who doesn’t love a birthday cupcake brunch?!
The decorations were left up for the week (quite festive). Fresh batches of cupcakes were baked the following Saturday (thank god my best friend was here and graciously offered her help to frost them, because I was about damn sick of frosting cupcakes), and promptly devoured by the ravenous hoard of first-graders.
If you hadn’t guessed by now, the party “theme” was Super Mario Bros! *Sweeeeeet* I made 90% of the decorations myself, with the help of my trusty printer, resulting in a lot of scissor-blisters and deadened hand and finger nerves.
For the 4-foot character wall graphics, I culled some large images from the internet, sliced them up in PhotoShop and printed the pieces out — Toad was 5 sheets, Bowser a whopping 24 sheets, and the others fell anywhere in between. I cut out all the pieces from the sheets and glue-sticked them together (felt like I was in grade-school again!); hung them on the walls with good-ol’ double-sided tape. They were a big hit! (with the kids and the adults!)
Also mocked-up a papercraft question block template, printed and assembled and filled them with gold coins for the kids.
Gunner had fantastic fun with his friends, and the weather was gorgeous (78° in mid-March Iowa?!) which kept the kids entertained outdoors most of the time.
I was the most apprehensive about the sleepover, but it also went really well; barely any quarreling, no homesick kids, and all three boys were passed-out asleep before midnight without any problems. Overall, a pretty successful birthday. Not sure how we’re going to top it next year!
