Joel's birthday party

Joel started planning his birthday sometime shortly after Christmas.  His original plan was to have his whole class over to watch Aladdin in the basement and to play games.  Over time it changed to Veggietales movies and something else.  I wanted Joel to actually play with the kids that came over and not be distracted by a movie.  Last year when everyone came over for his birthday he went a did one thing while everyone else was playing in the basement.  It just wasn't ideal.  I didn't want a repeat.  I went as far as to offer to have the party at Bouncetown for him and he turned down my offer.  He wanted the party at our house.  I decided to offer up some ideas for games and activities and ignore his movie requests.  At that point he had not mentioned a movie at his birthday party in over 2 weeks so I figured if I didn't mention it we would be fine.  We decided on a pinata, his request, decorating cupcakes and a pin the sword on the Minecraft guy game.  The weather forecast was good and the party was only 2 hours long so the plan was that any extra time could be spent playing in the backyard.

Our Pinata

The cupcake decorations ready and waiting

Grandma Diane made frosting for me and I colored it.  Lots of sprinkles too!

The cake!

The week before the party Cecilia and I looked on Pinterest to learn how to make a Minecraft TNT pinata because the only one I could find was too expensive and unless I paid overnight shipping it wouldn't have been here in time for the party.  We learned a lot and it looked great.  We had some issues with the string you hang it with coming out a few times during the breaking of the pinata, but we know how to fix it for next time.

Pin the diamond sword on the minecraft guy

Cupcake decorating

Lots of fun!

Joel getting ready for his turn

I made birthday party invitations and sent them to school with Joel.  I couldn't remember exactly how many kids were in his class and he wanted to invite his teachers so I sent a few extra to school.  He had extras so not only did he invite his classroom teachers but also the reading specialist and his OT.  It warmed my heart that he liked them enough to invite them!  The night before the party Joel informed me that he wanted a cake too, not just cupcakes.  Which meant a last minute scramble for Minecraft toys to decorate the creeper cake with.  Thank goodness for my friend's son who let us borrow his Minecraft Lego guys for decorations.

Kids playing in the barn.  They were trying to pull the scooters with the balance bike.  Brad was pretending they were a tractor pulling a planter.  He had the kids trying to throw balls into the garbage can like they were seeds going into the ground.  

Cake time

I wasn't sure how many kids would come to Joel's birthday.  He talks about a few kids from school but he has never been invited to a birthday party so I wasn't sure what to expect.  We had 9 kids and all the kids that Joel was really hoping would come were able to.  We had girls and boys and they all had a ton of energy!  They did all the activities we had planned plus playing in the yard, barn, and visiting the horses.  Joel was playing with them and goofing around with them and it was so great to see!  It was a busy 2 hours but worth it to see Joel have so much fun!

Cecilia and I decorated the leftover cupcakes