Brock's "Out of this World" Birthday Party

I am usually not into the whole elaborate, themed kids' birthday party thing. To be truthful, the birthday parties I throw for my kids are usually pretty lame. They pick a character for me to disastrously display on top of their cake, Justin and I invite a few of our friends and their kids over, we sing, blow out candles, open presents, and the kids all just free play while the adults sit around and visit.

This year, I decided to get a little bit fancy and actually have a few themed activities for the kids to do. Brock picked a space theme, and we printed-out astronaut party invitations from dltk-cards.com. The party date was set for Friday April 18th, and on Wednesday April 16th, I started searching online for cool space party ideas. I know, I know. Two days is NOT enough time to successfully put together a WOW space party. I did find some GREAT party ideas, but only had two days to pull it together, and wasn't willing to spend hundreds of dollars or stay up all night making cardboard rocket ships or paper mache space helmets, so I had improvised a little. In the end, I think it was a successful party.

We served Brock's favorite foods: pepperoni pizza & hot dog buns (Yes, there were dogs in the buns. It's just that Brock calls a hot dog in a bun a "hot dog bun", as opposed to the usual way my kids eat hot dogs: cut up on a plate with ketchup. He specifically wanted them served on buns for his party.) I also found these little vegetable martians that you can make by stacking tomatoes & cucumbers on a skewer with chow mein noodles as antennae:



I bought the supplies, but on the day of the party I COULD NOT find the chow mein noodles anywhere! I went ahead and stacked the vegetables without the chow mein antennae. They didn't exactly look like martians, but they looked kind of contemporary-decorative anyway.

I made my usual sad attempt at decorating a birthday cake. This time, I took a shot at making a u.f.o. with a martian inside. It didn't turn out quite like I had envisioned, but Brock was happy, so that's what really matters:



A friend of mine suggested that a good guideline for deciding how many guests to invite to your child's party is to go by the age of the child. Brock was turning six, so that meant he could invite six friends. I realized that this rule wouldn't work very well for us, however, since most of Brock's friends have siblings that are close to the same age, and I didn't feel right about inviting just one child from a family and making the brothers or sisters stay home. So, in the end we invited six families, and ended up with thirteen kids at the party. I thought it was just right.



The first game we played was a variation of "Sharks & Minnows". We called it "Astronauts & Aliens". One astronaut stood in the middle of the room while all of the aliens lined up against one wall. The aliens had to run from one end of the room to the other without getting tagged by the astronaut. Any aliens who did get tagged then became astronauts. The game continues until all of the aliens have become astronauts. We played that a couple of times and then moved on to the next activity...

I had spent several hours ahead of time turning the storage room into the surface of the moon. I hung paper cut-out stars from the ceiling, and giant floating aluminum foil meteors on the wall. I draped sheets over the storage shelves and placed a black light bulb in the room. On the floor, I made a "crater" by draping a white blanket over a bean bag and filled the "crater" with "moon rocks". To make the moon rocks, I mixed baking soda & water into a pasty dough and packed a small plastic alien toy inside each ball of dough and baked them in a warm oven for about 30 minutes. Then I let the "rocks" sit in the oven for several hours until they were nice and hard. Once the "rocks" were in the "crater", I covered them with balloons and had the kids pair up in groups of two and go on a "space mission" to the "moon". I had them line up at the "space portal" (storage room door) and gave them walkie talkies, tongs and a bag for collecting space rocks. Once they passed through the "space portal", I gave them instructions over the walkie talkie, telling them to use the tongs to dig through the balloons inside the crater and retrieve the "moon rocks". Once they had completed their mission and returned to "earth", they took the rocks to the "science lab" where they poured vinegar over the rocks, making the baking soda fizzle and revealing the toy alien inside. The whole thing was a big hit! My moon decorations were not at all fancy, but all it really took was a black light, some fizzy moon rocks, and the kids' imaginations did the rest.

Once everyone had collected and studied their moon rocks, we had them gather in the entryway where we had a "meteor shower". The "meteors" were made by wrapping Milky Way candy bars in paper towels and then covering them with aluminum foil. With the kids all in the main level entryway, I stood upstairs and threw the "meteors" over the banister at them. They gathered the meteors and enjoyed the treats found inside.

Finally, we sang "Happy Birthday" to Brock, he blew out his candles, and we ate cake and mint chocolate chip ice cream...Brock's favorite. Brock opened presents and the kids all went downstairs to play while the adults visited. It was a lot of fun, and I definitely slept well that night!!! In the end, I learned that a themed birthday party really can be a lot of fun, without costing a fortune or taking months of preparation. I do think that it will be one party that Brock will remember for a long time, and hopefully it made him feel like the special kid that he is.