Happy Birthday Van!

Yesterday we had Van's 7th birthday party. We invited 15 little kids and 14 of them made it, which was exciting and terrifying.

Here is what I had planned

A couple kids had no interest in going outside which surprised me, but luckily Svea and mom were able to stay in our house and watch those kids while they played with toys. They seemed happy.

For the treasure hunt I hid over 200 tiny ornaments and 10 plastic eggs in the yard. They had to find 3 ornaments and then bring them back to Svea and they could turn them in for 1 oreo. The eggs had little plastic toys in them. Here are a few examples of ornament hiding places. Look for gold or red sparkles on the ground or silver or white hanging from trees.

We laughed when dad picked some up before the party on his walk over to our house. Mom tried to tell him they were for a treasure hunt. 'No, these were just laying on the ground' he said. I told him everyone treasure hunts at a different level. 

Here is the wild pack in the beginning. We had to institute no running, no yelling rules when everyone got too out of hand.

Out treasure hunting

The ornaments were small and in some locations you had to take off your mitten to grab them. I was helping one girl who cried when her hand touched some snow. I can't really blame her, snow is cold, it's just that I'm used to Van. Who just the other day, just for fun, walked Finn Elin and Solvej home through the snow wearing only his underwear. No socks, no shoes, no clothes. Just underwear. and then when he got home, he told me it wasn't cold.

The next activity, the dinosaur dig.

I took a picture of them while I was making them

Each cup contains a mixture of sand, plaster of paris, and one small plastic dinosaur, plant or bug.

I read on a blog from a kindergarten teacher that this mixture was perfect. Not too hard that they would get frustrated, but hard enough that they could spend up to 30 mins working on it.

That was not the case for us. Each kid opened 5 fossils about 2 minutes total. But maybe that kindergarten teacher had not given the kids hammers.

Still Van said he loved it, so I was happy I did it.

Fossil imprint.

the kids took turns opening fossils and riding on a 4-wheeler and trailer with grandpa. Still we had extra time because the fossils were too fast.

We used the extra time making jib-jab videos. They loved that.

Here is one of their favorites:
http://www.jibjab.com/view/2XJXsC5bRmqz0S2UMgxLGw

First I had to take pictures of their faces to put in the video, some examples:

More kids on the dino dig

Svea was my expert baby holder so I could chase the older kids through activities.

They played upstairs for a while at the end (40 mins seems like 5 hours when you're worrying about kids getting out of hand, but they were calmer after all the activities and with a new lego set to put together. They did well with minimal intervention.)

Then it was time for cupcakes

And with that, the birthday was complete!

We asked for 'No presents' at his party this year for the first time. I was nervous to do it, Van loves presents of course and moms love making their kids birthdays amazing. But we just end up with too much stuff and it doesn't get taken care of.  Van loves it for 5 mins to a week and then I end up cleaning it up, throwing it away, or both. 

We wanted to reduce the quantity of things, and increase how important they all were to him. Nice idea, still hard to make yourself do it. Many of his friends had recently had 'no presents' birthday parties so I knew it would be easier now than ever. Still it felt like a betrayal of my 7 year old self. 

Still I am glad I did it. And he was glad one friend didn't realize and still brought him a present. 

I think overall it worked out. Each present he did receive from his family became even more special and as soon as his birthday was over, I made him track down all of his gifts, and assign them a location in the house so that when I tell him to put his toys away, he will know where these new things go.