Star Wars Birthday Party

For David's 7th birthday he asked for a Star Wars party. 

Chris and I love planning and throwing our kids birthday parties, and we try to make them into great memory makers for our family. 

David decided that he only wanted a smaller group of kids this year, which turned out to be a good thing for us since we decided the theme would be "Jedi Training" with everyone getting a "lightsaber".

Every "Padawan" (Jedi-in-training) gets hungry after a hard training session. So, of course we had some Star Wars snacks.

Chris had the kids doing different Jedi training. They had to fly an X-Wing and shoot the death star before they could learn to control the force. They were given a makeshift X-Wing built with the leftover duct tape and a two banana boxes. Then they learned to move things with the force (a balloon tied to some dental floss pulley).

Lightsaber training: First the kids worked at keeping a balloon in the air, which was a bit of a trick because of an unexpected breeze. After that, they learned some basic moves, and then got to practice on each other before defeating a dark Jedi (thanks Travis)

For a birthday cake, we decided to go out of our normal comfort zone and do an Ice Cream cake, Han Solo in Carbonite. The outside was chocolate melts mixed to grey, and cookies and cream inside.

 I think it is safe to say that David was happy with his cake, and his whole birthday party.

Star Wars Birthday Party

Jaclyn's 5th Birthday

My little girl has turned 5 years old, or as she puts it, "I'm a whole handful!" (this is more accurate than she knows) 

Every year for our kids birthdays, we end up having two celebrations, one small family celebration on their actual birthday with just the four of us, and then their party with their friends.

 

We also let them choose the meals for the day on the their actual birthday, and this year Jaclyn chose to go to Montana's Cookhouse for dinner, she was very excited as to this is also her favorite restaurant (the kids call it the cowboy restaurant). They love the decor there and everything about it seems like an adventure with lots of fun. The staff at Montana's sang her a birthday song while she wore their birthday hat. It scared her a bit at the time, as it was louder than she expected, but as soon as the staff scattered after the song she started to talk about how much fun it was to wear a silly hat and have them sing to her. She loved that everyone said happy birthday to her and she got a "special" ice cream treat.

For her friends/cousins party, she wanted a "Secret of the Wings" theme, which is the latest Disney Tinkerbell movie. We ended up doing cupcakes this year instead of a full cake, partially because half our cake decorating items are still packed up and also because that was her request. Jaclyn loves crafts right now and daily can be found rummaging through her craft bin looking to make a new creation. When planing her party we decided to do crafts with all the kids instead of games. Some crafts we did included making snow globes (Secret of the wings" was in the "winter woods") and making "fairy houses" out of old cereal boxes. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and all the kids were able to have their pictures taken with Tinkerbell and Periwinkle cutouts that Chris drew and painted. Jaclyn loved it and talked about it for more than a week afterwards, which always makes us smile.

Craft Time

Pictures with the Tinkerbell and Periwinkle

Lots of memories made and another year on the way. She is, of course, already planning her next birthday party.

Jaclyn's 5th Birthday

Birthday Princess

My beautiful daughter turned 3 this week. 

Every year for my children's birthdays I ask them what type of theme they want for there party, this typically means what kind of cake they want. This year Jaclyn asked for a Mickey Mouse theme, and there were a few things in particular that she requested.

 Our Birthday Girl

These are Minnie Mouse ears that I made. We had either Mickey or Minnie ears for all the kids who came. She had seen mouse ears in a picture and decided that she really wanted them, and we found a pretty easy way to do them.

 

 Of course, there always has to be present openings, which is always a bit of a stretch for her, since she would much rather just check out the first thing she gets than to continue on.

One of the biggest highlights for the kids was Mickey and Minnie cake pops, which was certainly a departure from the regular cakes I do.

These are the Mickey & Minnie Cake pops.

Basically, it is cake on a stick dipped in chocolate

I think they turned out pretty good.

Happy Birthday to our lovely daughter.

Birthday Princess