Caleb's First "Friends" Party

Yesterday, Caleb finally had his long awaited friends birthday party. It was actually sort of his third birthday party after visiting with my family and then Jake's parents, but he was really excited to have his friends come out for some fun.

Jake HATES the stress associated with big parties, as do I, but I have to say that there's definitely an excitement and anticipation that comes with planning and throwing one that makes it a really memorable experience, especially now that Caleb is old enough to really appreciate one. Since we've never managed to be close to family for our birthdays, it's been pretty easy to just have quiet little celebrations thus far all to ourselves.

Our birthdays have usually consisted of just our little family traditions at home. The birthday person wakes up to their chair at the table decorated with balloons, then we take their height measurement on our portable height chart (totally necessary with all the moving we do). They get to pick their favorite dinner for that night, as well as the type of cake and ice cream they want. I usually do my best to decorate the cake and then we just have gifts after dinner. Nothing big. So, this was an entirely different undertaking. Thankfully, Caleb invited a pretty reasonable number of kids to the party, to break us into the idea easier - and then there only ended up being four who could make it, all kids from our complex funny enough - a pair of brothers, Ryan & Sean, a second-grader named Jadon, and a little girl from Caleb's class last year, Vera, so it was a very easy six kids to worry about all together.

Caleb wanted to do a Pokemon theme party, so I got quite the education on what exactly Pokemon are and which ones were which. My, there are a lot of them, too! I scoured the internet for party ideas and had a few ideas of my own. I think the kids all had a pretty good time. We used the community room here in our apartment complex, so there was plenty of room for the kids to run around, plus they had all the long tables and plenty of chairs. Very handy! Here is his Pokeball cake. For the layperson, a Pokeball is used to catch and hold the Pokemon. Then the "trainers" who catch them can use them for battling other Pokemon. Just a little insight for ya there.
The kids started off by designing their own Pokemon and making their own Pokemon cards. Then after a little Pokemon hunt, they got to use "Pokeballs" (aka waterballoons) to throw at their Pokemon to catch them. True to form, the balloons I bought were nearly impregnable and it took some effort to get them to pop.Next was an egg & spoon race, running backwards. One of the Pokemon, named Togepi, is in an egg, so that's how I got away with that one.Jake drew and then poster painted an amazing likeness of the Pokemon Charmander for the kids to play "Pin the Fire on the Charmander". Without a flame on his tail he can die (bet cha didn't know that).Then we finished off the activities by decorating mini pokecakes. The idea was to make their pokecake look like a Pokemon. I think that Bren ate more frosting and candies than actually made it onto his cake.Overall, I think it ended up being a really fun time for Caleb. Jake was relieved to have it all overwith and vows that it will be a long while until the next big party, but I think he enjoyed it deep down, too, he he.