Here are pictures from Logan’s first ever, boys-only birthday party.There were 8 boys in attendance – three of them ours. Based on the advice of a friend, we had Nana and Papa buy Logan a Light Strike Laser Gun for Christmas last year. Her son (my friend that is) was getting one. He’s one of Logan’s best buddies down the street and they work best when you can play with more than one. They actually work like laser tag guns where you can shoot at each other, shoot at targets or other various devices. We realized that it was pretty cool once we had it in hand. After Christmas, we were in Toy R Us one day and the whole line of light strike guns and accessories was on sale – super sale! Logan had already requested a laser-tag birthday party. We had assumed we would be doing our very first out-of-house party at one of the various laser-tag facilities in the area. However, the guns were so cheap…Brian and I started pondering and realized we could actually save a ton of $$ by giving each boy at the party one of these guns as the party favor and set up games in our house. And so we did. Brian had a bunch of great (male-brained) ideas about target practice, sharp shooting, quick draw competitions and so forth. I wasn’t keen on an all-out battle because I know how feelings get hurt. I think everything went really well. It was actually one of our more stressful parties because it was only Brian and I running the show and Brady decided (I don’t know, after being woken up at 6 by a very excited birthday boy) to be unreasonable and cranky the whole time. However, we rallied and a good time was had by all! I heard only positive reviews (although those came from the mommies…who are my friends…and might lie just to make me feel good….) Logan said it was his best birthday party ever. And why not?! Finally, he had 7 other boys playing his favorite game for 3 hours straight!

This is Thursday, March 8th. I had somewhere I needed to go before bedtime so I asked Brian to make sure to take a picture of the boys on the last day they were 4, 5 and 6 years old.

 

…and of course….this is what happened….

…and yes, again, Brady refuses to wear shirts to bed.

 

Logan requested marble cupcakes with camo frosting (do I have a sign on my head that says cupcake master or something? camo frosting?) I searched the web and found these whoopie pies. Now THIS is something I can do! I divided a white cake batter into 4 different bowls, played with food coloring to make these camo colors, put each color in a squirt bottle and then filled up the whoopie pie tin with blobs of color – so stinkin’ easy! (yes, I bought a whoopie pie tin…from Michael’s). The actual pieces come out like tiny little pancake shapes.

“Aiden” got a cookie maker for Christmas. Daddy happened to buy him a nice one (instead of the “press dough” he wanted on TV) that happens to do really nice icing as well….interesting move daddy (wink wink)

Ta – DA!

Logan had a soccer game the day of his party so Aiden and I  made this sign for the front door while he was gone

And Aiden played with the chex mix pretzels.

I asked 1/2 the boys to come in orange and 1/2 to come in green for team purposes

…and then I realized, after I made that request, that the birthday boy…whose favorite color is GREEN, didn’t have a green shirt! I ran to Old Navy (during above-mentioned soccer game) and bought him one. I might have also done a quick 30-minute project of adding a 7 to the back using one of his favorite tee-shirts that was FAR too small as a special surprise. maybe. I saw this in Family Fun a few years ago and it is SO easy. I’m putting instructions on my projects blog soon.

 

and back to the party! Here are the boys (minus cousin Jack) standing in front of the boys-only sign.

compared to other parties: minimal decorations

and a tiny little spread of treats

so easy, so quick, so fun….so delicious (I think I made a nice-sized hole in that cheddar popcorn all by myself!)

First off, the boys got their faces painted. The look of the day: serious, deadly, all-about-business!

Team Orange!

Team Green!

The first thing they had to do was find their ammo stash. No guns? No glory! I did a scavenger hunt with envelopes that had either an orange or a green laser gun on them. The hunts were identical, but in total random order so they were running everywhere looking for their envelopes. Picture below: This hint was “want some toast?” because I keep the toaster under the counter in a crazy cabinet. Obviously my boys had to help their team mates with that one! Once all the clues were found, they had to turn them over and read the “password” to dad who was standing guard outside the room that housed all the guns (Brady’s old nursery….doesn’t sound so manly when you put “nursery” in there…whatever). The password, made up by Brian my darling still-has-the-brain-of-a-7-year-old-boy was: “taco, pizza, booger, brains, hall, of fame,” har har har.

 

After they got their guns 2 things happened: Number One, Brian gave them a training session. Number Two, There was NEVER another moment of silence and non-laser-gun shooting for the rest of the day. literally

Many games were played, sometimes a team lost….we made them shake hands.

Time for cake…whoopie!

Logan opening his gifts:

Aiden playing with the bows

Oh look! Logan got the DS football game he’s been wanting!

…and Aiden played with bows

…and then they went outside and Aiden was still playing with the bows

 

Goody bags…pure candy!

After the official games were over, they ran….

 

and ran

and laughed

and ran

and played

and ran

and had fun

and snuck an extra woopie pie before mom could catch them!