A Jedi Birthday

On Sunday the 14th, Gage turned 9 years old!! His last year in single digits before moving on to a tween. Where does time go?! It doesn't seem that long ago that I was giving him a Curious George monkey for his 5th birthday while he was in footy pajamas...the days when he would still cry when he lost to Disney Bingo...the days when he hollered for Jake from the bathroom to announce that his poop was "creamy"...Sigh...

Anywhoo, memories aside...he's growing up now! To celebrate, we gave him the choice of going to Frightmares at Lagoon or having a birthday party at home with school and primary friends, thinking he'd totally go for rides, haunted houses and Churros. Right?! Wrong...he surprised Jake and I both by choosing to have a friends party instead. So late Monday night, I was scrambling to throw together a birthday party that would take place 5 days later. Luckily, I had a sweet Star Wars birthday party idea pinned on Pinterest, so a Stars Wars birthday party he got! I had successfully executed a Superhero birthday for him for his 6th birthday, so using a similar style, we planned a Jedi training where the goal of the party was to find Gage's missing birthday cake.

Here's the exclusive details on the party of the year....

Darth Vader and Yoda invitations.

Inside the cards read:

"Inviting all Jedis!

An evil emperor has stolen 

Gage's birthday cake!

Your Jedi skills are needed to track 

it down and save the Galactic Empire. 

Lunch and a Jedi training will be provided 

to sharpen your skills. Please joins us, 

and may the force be with you..." 

(Ehh...had I not had 15 minutes to throw the invites together I would have realized that "Jedis" is probably not correct since I think "Jedi" is already the plural form, and then I also would have maybe realized that the Galactic Empire is actually part of the dark side and that the Galactic Republic is the society that the Jedi fight for. Whatever. Don't be a nerd and call me out on it.)

Moving on...

I hung blue and silver foil stars from the ceiling for decor, and then the party of course needed light sabers since every worthy Jedi has one. Most Star Wars parties that I've looked up online have used actual light saber toys that are about $20 a piece, or homemade light sabers made out of pool noodles by cutting them in half and duck-taping the ends...I think they look retarded, and I'm not rich enough for the other option. Instead, my brilliant mind decided to buy foam swords from the craft store and then tweaked them into light sabers by cutting off the pirate handles, painting the remaining handle base black, duck-taping the handles to make them silver and then adding random blue masking tape squares and lines for buttons and what not. I think they turned out pretty fantastic...even if they aren't round! The kids didn't complain. 

Next up was the lunch menu I planned out. This might be my fave part of the whole party...ok, it was. Sure I could've just had boxes of pizza for the ravenous children, but how unoriginal is that? I snazzed it up a bit and labeled everything using the Star Wars font found online...

As you can see, menu items included:

Han-Burgers  (mini sliders)

Palpatine's Pizza  (bagel pizza bites)

Yoda Soda  (Sprite and green sherbet)

Obi-Wan Kabob-ies  (strawberries, pineapple, grapes)

Wookie Cookies  (frosted oatmeal cookies)

Chewbacca Chips  (barbeque chips)

Princess Lays  (regular chips)

UHH-DORABLE!!!

The party started off with lunch once all the hopeful Jedis arrived, followed by games, which Jake was in charge of because I was too stressed out doing the above mentioned things already. We didn't have time to plan an elaborate scavenger hunt like I would have liked, so instead Jake kind of winged it and planned games such as Fighter Jet making (paper airplanes), a Pop-Rocks eating contest (seeing who could keep the whole packet in their mouth the longest with no peeps), and Asteroid Dodgeball which was the fave of the party. We used balled chunks of tin foil for the asteroids and had the boys play dodgeball in our emptied-out basement, encouraging them to use their light sabers for blocking. They loved it!! Then, to tie in everything to finding the birthday cake, the winners of each game above were handed a clue to help discover the secret location of the cake...which was hidden in Jake's car trunk. At the end of all the games, the boys came together to read their clues and figure it out.

 

Eventually the cake was found and the boys acted as if they really did just save the planet, waving their light sabers and announcing to everyone that they passed that they had found the birthday cake. Victory!..and then of course, there's always that one kid who claims he knew where it was the whole time. Liar, liar pants on fire.

After cake and ice cream (Beaver Tracks ice cream!), Gage opened his buttload of presents, and that was it...successful birthday party completed! That meant time for a group pic of everyone with their light sabers before all the kids went home. It was a great, fun-filled day...and I needed a nap after.

Oh, and for the record, Gage LOOOOOVES my Shutterfly book we gave him saying it's his most favorite treasured present that he'll keep forever and ever, which really was a tough competition among all the assortments of Nerf guns he got. I'm beaming with pride! Hooray!! 

* HaPpY BiRthDaY Gage! *