Daniel Turns 6!

Okay, I'm blogging about this almost two months late - sorry. Better late than never! Poor Daniel has the misfortune of having a birthday a few days after Christmas. Though in some respects he's lucky, because he gets a serious haul, he doesn't have any big event to look forward to for the rest of the year. On the other hand, he usually gets two cakes. One on his birthday, and one when I can finally muster up the energy after the holiday excesses to throw him a party. We brought his birthday cake over to a friend's house to celebrate with them.

By the way, the cake decoration was totally Dan's design. He was very particular about how he wanted his cake to look. He wanted chocolate cake with blue frosting, red letters (shh! don't tell him they're pink!), and rainbow candy canes. I wasn't really sold on the look, but went with it anyway. And the most important thing was that he loved it.

This is after a bit of coaching on blowing out candles without spitting. Notice my friend's little guy being physically restrained? He really, really wanted those candles.

Now, on to the party. Call me insane. I called myself insane countless times during the party, so I won't be offended. I usually only throw my kids a party every other year, for the very fact that I think I will go nuts if I have to do it every single year. But this was Dan's year for a party so I had no choice but to dig in and plan a shindig. He has an impressive group of friends from church, school and the neighborhood. Seriously, that kid makes friends left and right and I felt bad leaving anyone out. So I didn't. There were 14 friends there. FOURTEEN! Plus 4 siblings! And the whole two hours was spent in the dining room and living room. More about that later. Here's a snapshot I caught on the sly of Daniel staring down the clock waiting for the party to start. "How much longer Mom?" Very cute.

Daniel wanted a Mario Kart party. Not a Super Mario party, a Mario KART party. There were all kinds of ideas on the web for a Super Mario party, of course, but not much for a Mario Kart party. So I had to make up a bunch of stuff. Come on! I want to be a slacker and just steal all the great ideas someone else came up with! Below is the cake I was trying to make for Dan. I found a picture of Mario on a motorcycle and was trying to replicate it on a cake. This was my toothpick drawing:
Not so impressive. It looked a bit better once I outlined it all, but don't look too closely.
And the finished product with the birthday boy:
I had also made some cute red mushroom cupcakes, but I must have spaced taking a picture of them. There was a lot going on that morning! Here are some of the party guests hard at work coloring in their Mario pictures on the goodie bags. When the kids arrived they each got a Mario hat. I made them out of fleece - yes, it was a bit of work, but I wanted them to bring a party favor home that wouldn't just get tossed in the trash immediately. If you were one of the party goers and threw yours away, don't tell me! Just let me think it was time well spent.
Aaron and Joshua thought the party needed to be similar to the game and since they're experts, they helped a ton. We had 4 "races" the kids all had to complete to get to the closing ceremonies. Aaron and Joshua were great helpers with the Mario Kart track game. They designed a big board game that the kids had to travel around - it went in a big circle from the living room through the kitchen and dining room to the finish line back in the living room. The kids could land on bomb-ombs (sp?) or mushrooms, etc. They rolled a big die to see how many spaces to go. Joe was great at moving the kids along the course. Here are a couple Marios getting near the finish line:
Next we played "Hot Bomb-omb!" Basically it was hot-potato with a bomb-omb. This is the last round with Dan and Berkely battling it out. Amazingly, Dan won, which made him a happy bday boy.
The third course was pin the mustache on Mario. I drew Mario a week or so before the party and all my kids helped color him in. They loved helping and I loved not having to do everything myself. The kids thought Mario looked hilarious with 14 mustaches on him.
And for the last "race" we played "Pop the Balloon to get the Coin Thingys" Whatever. We were struggling to come up with one more "race" to finish out the tournament. Aaron and Josh were adamant that we needed 4 races to get to the ceremony. The kids popped the balloons and turned in their coins for M&Ms. Yum.
Oh, and I also fed them all lunch - hot dogs cut up that they ate with cocktail picks, apples and chips. I'm glad we have a huge table!

Then the real feeding frenzy began. I'm going to do this much differently next time. I can't believe how out of control it got. A word to the wise: never allow yourself to be caught alone with 14+ kids and a pile of presents. They'll win every time. They were ripping off paper and going on to the next present before I could even ask who gave the previous one. My trusty helper Joe, had to leave to Aaron's basketball game and I was all alone.

When all the guests left I locked myself in the back room and took a nap for 4 hours. Ha! I wish. No, it really wasn't that bad. A bit loud and energetic, but it was fun too. Or so I keep telling Joe. He is hoping that for the next birthday we can just buy the kid off and forget the party.