Saturday, November 14, 2009

How We Celebrated His #7

Last Sunday after worship while Pastor was giving announcements, Sam leaned over to me and said, "I want a birthday party and I want Griffin and Travis and Aiden to come." I asked him what he wanted to do at his party, he replied, "have lots of fun." Okay. This was three (!) days before his birthday. But we made it work, and he did have lots of fun. It was the first birthday party Sam ever had where he invited friends.

Since he didn't give me any ideas on what kind of birthday I began searching the internet for something. When I ran across party ideas for The Lord of the Rings, I knew this would work. Sam has always loved LOTR, and with decision made, plans began.
First his cake. I googled Lord of the Rings birthday cakes and got this idea:

I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

Next I thought about games. David and I thought it would be fun to do some sort of scavenger hunt. That idea led us into a quest to destroy the ring. Hannah drew an overhead view of the parsonage and church renaming places with LOTR names. Ellie was "Gandalf" and led them from place to place.

At their first stop, Rivendell, I gave them each a foam sword (which doubled as a take-home goodie). And like 7 year old boys, began using them right away.
At Lothlorien, the Lady Galadriel, (aka Abby) gave them each a cape to wear (ours) and a light (aka those neon glow sticks, another take-home goodie).

They finally made it through Mordor to the Mountain of Doom (aka our fire pit) and cast in the ring (aka an empty plastic tape ring Ellie had spray painted gold).

The boys thought it great to watch it melt. "Hey it looks like a melting worm," one of them said.

Then it started on fire.

Then the boys were content to run around play-fighting for a little while before I made them all come into the house.

The other game I planned was "shoot the orc." Hannah drew an orc and then she and Ellie went over to the church and projected it onto bigger roll paper, traced and colored it. We taped it to the door in the basement. I think it looked great!

After supper (Sam chose corn dogs, baked beans, and chips - Cheetos and Doritoes) Sam opened his gifts.

A Vikings jersey from Dad and Mom that he hasn't taken off since.

















An axe from his brothers and sisters.


















And two other fun things from his guests. They were soon opened and all the boys took turns playing with them and using the big dart gun to shoot that big orc!




























And then we sang Happy Birthday before enjoying cake and homemade ice-cream.

4 comments:

Bikermom said...

Glenda! That isso awesome! I might have to look this post up next may for another LOTR nut. We have not done birthday parties for anyone in quite a while. Glad you had fun!

Katie said...

Wow! What a fun day!! It sounds like you are all having a blast over there!

Laura said...

Very nice party! Kind of nice to just have it fall into place too...less stress thinking about it for awhile! I really do love your pictures!

Cate said...

What a cool party idea! Looks like the kids had a great time, and even though I don't love the Vikes, that's still a pretty cool jersey (way cooler than Favre's would have been ;) ).