Last week Friday, my little booger decided to defy all of my orders and turned seven. That’s right. He’s growing up. I’ve since realized that no matter how hard you try, at multiple points in your child’s life, you will utter the phrase…
They just grow up so fast.
I’m a big, big, huge fan of birthdays, and since Delan has been with the same class for the past 4 years, we wanted to throw a friend birthday party.
Now, I’d like to begin the next thought with the fact that I am pro-inclusion. That means if you invite the class, you invite the whole class.
…Even if the whole class has 30 kids. I don’t know if you knew, but that’s a lot of kids. I was terrified that everyone would show up, and I’d have little kids up the wazoo, running around my house.
Hence, the need for an outdoor party. For Delan’s birthday, we decided to do a good ol’ fashioned drive in movie theater. Delan picked his favorite Pokemon movie, so that gave us more of a theme to go by (and re-using decor from when he turned one, and had the same theme!)
Rob brought over a trailer full of pallets and we put them together in kid-style movie theater seating, with the help of a little poly foam and felt covering. We had six pallets (2 x 3) for seating, and it managed to fit all of the kids just fine. We found a projector off of Amazon for a decent price – which aside from the projector’s sound being terrible, was a great buy. Rob had some speakers which we managed to hook up to get better sound.
The day of the party, Delan gathered up all his pillow pets (because we have a zoo, featuring, but not limited to, Rally Al, the Chesire Cat, a glow in the dark puppy, the unicorn from Despicable Me, and a triceratops) and we put out blankets in case anyone got cold.
We had lots of kid snacks (fruit by the foot, twizzlers, popcorn, juice boxes) and I made pigs in a blankets and cheese bites (the following pin, minus the pepperoni) to give the kids something more substantial. Rumor has it that the grown ups ate most of those.
We ended up having 24 kids in total – which if you didn’t know – gets REALLY LOUD, REALLY FAST. The kids each got to take home party buckets that Delan’s dad and his girlfriend had drawn Pokemon faces on – there was a frenzy of bucket and Pokemon figure trading too, and that accounted for a lot of the noise.
WHO WANTS TO TRADE FOR A LEGENDARY?!
I’ve never used the…
-if you can hear me, clap once-
…trick so many times in a night. The kids were pretty well-behaved though, and once the movie started, I was amazed [and thankful] that most of them settled down. Kids that got antsy were allowed to play in the backyard – they had glow sticks for when it got dark(Delan’s dad found Pikachu themed ones!) and it looked like a mini rave, watching them play back there.
The one thing I didn’t realize until after the party was that I had taken almost no photos, which is most unlike me. Here’s this Pinterest worthy party I’ve put together and no photo evidence to show all that hard work.
…which brings me to ask…
If a party is thrown in a forest, and no one Pinterests it, wasn’t it ever really thrown??
Finding L.A. 