Jackson's 4th Birthday

You would think now that I am staying home WITHOUT a gazillion kiddos running around my home, that I'd be better about keeping up with my blog.  The truth is that we have been doing so much lately, that every time I sit down and think about blogging, I get overwhelmed with everything I should post, and don't.  I guess the most major event that has passed is Jackson's birthday. 
I was about 33 weeks pregnant when Jackon's birthday hit. After the Mario birthday party I threw for him in Tulsa last year (that he talked about and asked me to tell him "the story" about at bedtime for months afterwards), I had decided that this year we were going to keep it low key to make it less work for me. I looked into bounce house places and swimming pools, but everything was so expensive and I just couldn't justify the cost for only a few hours. He had requested a superhero birthday party, and I was all set to throw him a standard pre-packaged superhero birthday party, but this is me we are talking about and I just couldn't wrap my mind around something so unoriginal, especially if it is COSTLY and unoriginal.

So...I researched some homemade superhero party games and decided that the theme of the birthday party would be Superhero Training Camp. The kids would complete a series of heroic tasks and then get to decorate a superhero cape and masks as they celebrated becoming "real" superheroes. I invited most of his friends from preschool, sewed simple superhero capes, cut out felt shapes and letters for each child's name, and bought some superhero masks. Here are some pictures to document how much fun we had.

This is the villian pinata I made.  It started out as a cheap baseball pinata from Hobby Lobby, but I painted it.  The kids took turns beating up the bad guy with boxing gloves and then a bat.

This is SuperHero Jackson.  I made some felt masks with each child's name on them and we played pin the mask on the superhero.

This bad guy served as target practice with the dart gun.  The kids had to shoot him to prevent him from stealing the money from the bank.

Here is the one concession to the standard superheroes that I made.  The cupcake tower was all decorated with Batman and Spiderman stickers and decor and I tried my hand for the first time with gum paste cupcake toppers.  I just made standard store bought cake mix and made cupcakes and frosted them with store bought frosting, then made the toppers and stuck them to the top.  Easy Peasy!

Here is a cute shot of little brother Sam, age 27 months, hitting the villian pinata with the boxing gloves at the party.

And well, it was the beginning of September in Texas, so it was hot.  We had to have a water balloon fight to end the party!  My camera was dying so I just clicked away, and you can't really tell what the kids were doing.

 Here is a shot of the capes I made for the youngest partiers, the 2 year olds, Samson and Alex (Bradley Andersen's little sister).  I made their capes beforehand since I thought they'd need a lot of help to make them and that way I could use them as examples for the bigger kids to follow when designing their own capes.

The new superhero squad...

...showing off their successful completion of training camp!  :)

(One game was not pictured - as I mentioned, my camera was dying - the kids had to rescue a "victim" from the top of a skyscraper.  I had spray painted a box black and cut out yellow rectangles for windows and put a baby doll on top.  The kids had to walk ONLY on the yarn spiderweb path to get to the skyscraper.)