Called 2 Motherhood: Camping Party and Other Stuff

So, I am way behind on my blogging. I have several posts brewing...about Aidan's birthday, Christmas, New Years, etc...but, I can't seem to get it together.
For one thing, my house has been a disaster since Christmas, and I can't seem to catch up. It's like shoveling snow during a blizzard, and I'm beginning to wonder why I bother. Apparently, the people I live with don't mind living in a sty, so why should I care?? It's like a frat house around here...dirty dishes and underwear everywhere I look!

On a side note...I put a poll on my page...I'd love for you to weigh in on this very important topic. Please tell me I'm not the only one with Christmas decorations still up! This may be the longest they've ever been up. I blame the new puppy. I'm hoping to do a poll on a weekly basis, but we'll see...maybe no one will vote and then I will be sad and refuse to do another one in protest!

Now, to the point of this post. I threw Aidan a very successful birthday party this year. (Hey, it's not bragging if it's true). So, I thought I'd share with you what I spent hours scouring the internet to find, in case you would like to throw a similar party for your birthday boy (or camping enthusiast girl!).

First, the invitations I made were cute, easy and cheap. I did not take a picture of them. Sorry.
I used camouflage scrap booking paper, cut it into rectangles and folded it to look like a tent. Then, I put cute camping stickers on the outside. The party info was on the inside. I think the inside read something like, Camper Aidan is turning 8 and you're invited to camp out late! Then, I included "essential camping gear" "report to the mess hall for hot dogs @ 6:30," etc. I gave kids the option of spending the night or going home at 9. Most chose to spend the night.

For food, we roasted hot dogs over our fire pit outside. We had chips to go along with the hot dogs. I did not do much else, because I knew the kids would be too excited to eat much, and I was right. Later in the night we roasted marshmallows.

For the games, I divided them into 2 teams, so there weren't too many wild boys trying to play one game at a time. To make dividing into teams easy, I bought orange and green bandanas and wrote "Camp McAlister" on them and the date. I put them in a bucket and the kids had to draw one out. Each team had a bag of camping loot that they had to find using clues that I had written. The loot was in a pillow case tied with the matching color bandana. The loot included green and orange glow necklaces and glow sticks, green and orange whistles, compasses, candy and snacks, and some camping silly bands that my mom found at the Import Store in Fort Worth.

Next, the groups rotated through the other games. For one, we did "Search and Rescue." I took Aidan's small tent and filled it with balloons. I put it in a dark room. Mixed in with the balloons were more prizes, like slinkys, silly bands and candy. They had to use their flash light and dive into the tent one at a time. They had 30 seconds or so to find as many prizes as they could.

The Orange Team searching for prizes

Another game was fishing. I cut out 50 fish shapes and glued them together with a prize inside. The prizes included candy, lizards, bugs, and frogs. I stapled a small loop of pipe cleaner in the mouth. I made fishing poles out of sticks with twine. I bent a paper clip into the shape of a hook and tied on the end of the twine. The kids had to fish for prizes. They loved this, and some even became obsessed with it.

The Orange Team Fishing

The Green Team Fishing

This is the cake:

We added some toy snakes, lizards and frogs for fun

I was really happy with how it turned out, and Aidan loved it. I am far from a professional cake decorator, but I love making the kids' birthday cakes, and they love it too. For the tent, I used chocolate pop tarts and stuck them together with icing. The river is just icing tinted blue with crushed pecans to look like rocks around the sides. The trees are sugar cones with icing on them. All the kids wanted to eat one of those trees! For the fire, I used pretzels to look like logs. Then I stuck some of the candles down in the fire pit, so when they were lit it looked like a real camp fire. For the grass, I didn't have the right decorator tip, so I poked some holes in a ziploc bag with a toothpick and squeezed the green icing on that way. It was very quick; it really took hardly any time at all to get all the grass on. The cake was a big hit with all the kids.

Next we opened presents. Then, all the formal parts of the party were over. A few kids went home at 9. The rest played flash light tag in the back yard and roasted marshmallows. Then they got into their pajamas and sleeping bags, watched a movie, ate popcorn and went to sleep...but not before giggling wildly at several bursts of potty humor. Aidan said it was the best party ever. It was easy, fun and inexpensive for us too.
Here are some more pictures of the kids enjoying the party: