Joshua's SURPRISE Birthday Party

When doing a surprise party, it helps when you do the party 6 weeks after their birthday. Then they are REALLY not expecting a party! This was Joshua's first friend party (if you don't count the one he had when he was 4 and we combined it with Anna's party and none of his friends came). This time we invited 9 of his friends and they all came :) No girls this time, just boys. He went over to his friend's house to play after school and then was sidetracked by our neighbors, Jim & Charlotte, who invited him over for a minute. Joshua returned home to be greeted by a house full of friends. He was REALLY surprised!

The hardest part was trying to make the cake without any of the kids seeing me. Including Luke! I couldn't tell any of the kids (except Anna) about the party for fear of something slipping. Just when I would be on a roll (or cake - haha) it would be time to clean up before the kids got home. Finding time when Porter was "happy" on his home was a challenge. He spent some time in the bjorn reaching for mounds of cake, but never quite getting any :)




We made it a "Survivor" Theme so we could do challenge games and activities. It was kind of fun "setting the state". However, after it was all over it looked like a tornado had just blown through.






One of the favorite challeneges was melting an ice cube in your hands (without dropping it) until you could eat the "dead beetle" inside (aka - raisin). They also got to sew up a little camouflage bag to keep their treasures in. This was indeed a challenge for some, but you cannot survive on an island without being able to sew! Right?


One thing I realized is that I should have used a microphone when giving directions. BOY! These 9 - 10 year olds were NOISY! Super noisy and hyper! Good thing we fed them cake at 9:30 pm and sent them home. Haha. However, it was a lot of fun. And it is now over......