Jacob's 11th birthday

Part 1:

Jacob's birthday fell on a Sunday this year. We decided to have his Birthday party on the Friday before. The day before his party we welcomed our 2nd visitor In August; my sister Christy. I was so excited to have Christy come and I didn't want to be stressed out getting ready for the party the first day she was here so I did a lot of prep in the days before.

Jacob wanted a "marshmallow gun party" or rather I think I came up with the idea based on his love for any kind of weaponry and he agreed enthusiastically. It gets harder to entertain kids as they get older so I figured making and decorating their own gun would take time, the gun would be their take home gift instead of a little bag filled with treats/prizes and then a marshmallow war would work nicely as a main activity.

I found a pattern online and went to Home Depot to buy my PVC pipe. A nice employee cut it all into my desired 7 inch and 4 inch lengths for me. It saved me having to buy a PVC pipe cutter and time and hand pain I am sure.

We separated all the PVC pipe pieces and connectors into baskets with labels a couple nights before and stored them in the basement. We studied games online and got the parts ready beforehand.

We baked and froze cupcakes a few nights before. I bought frosting from the store. (egads! I haven't used storebought frosting for birthday cakes ever. ) I usually have the time and enjoy making my own. This time, time/energy was a factor and it was a good decision.

We decided gumdrop targets would be fun for his party cupcakes. We rolled and cut the gumdrops a couple nights before and stored them in a plastic bag til the big day.

The night before his party we got the cupcakes out and Christy& Samantha helped me frost them and decorate them with the gumdrop targets and we set out the baskets or marshmallow gun parts and decorated the front room with streamers and balloons and Happy Birthday signs.

This is how the party went:

12:00 boys arrive. It's a little weird at first because there's a combination of boys from his 2 different schools but they get along pretty well after initial awkwardness.

Boys follow patterns of fun on wall and put together their own marshmallow gun.

Boys use different colored electrical tape and duct tape to decorate and personalize their gun.

12:30 Boys sing Happy birthday to Jacob and eat cupcakes while he opens presents.

12:4o boys grab paper ammo bag and head outside to 3 stations to collect ammo for their battle

Station 1:

Boys must shoot marshmallows at stacked cups, knocking over tower and either knocking over or hitting each cup. When goal is accomplished they are rewarded with a scoop of marshmallows for their ammo bags

Station 2:

Boys must shoot marshmallows at garage door above buckets trying to gauge just where and how hard to strike to get their marshmallows to fall into the buckets below which are marked with different point values. Each boy must reach a goal of 100 points to earn their scoop of marshmallows for ammo bag.

Hardest station.

Station 3:

Boys must hit a combination of balloons marked with point values to reach 100 points with their marshmallow guns to earn a scoop of marshmallows for their ammo bag.

Easiest station.

1:20 Once their ammo bags were full they divided into teams and had a battle running around the yard, making a lot of noise and barricades and shooting lots of marshmallows. It wasn't too stressful. The boys seemed to have a great time and Jacob was happy.

Success.

Part 2:

I kind of hate it when they have their real birthday and party on different days because I feel that pressure to make 2 days uber-special and let's face it...

I think it's something if you get it done once!

He wanted a fort cake for his real birthday. I used one chocolate cake mix doctored up with my cake doctor cook-book and poured the batter into 3 different sized rectangle & square pans. I told Jacob I didn't have instructions for a fort cake when he first suggested the idea and that I needed a picture at the very least if I was going to make a fort cake.

He drew me one......

I was really nervous about how to proceed. In the weeks before, I ended up buying anything chocolate covered I could find that seemed appropriate for fort building. I had chocolate covered wafers. I had chocolate covered grahms. I had chocolate covered marshmallow puffs. I had sprees for a little color. I had cylindrical pirouline cookies. The night before his birthday we put everyone to bed and started decorating.

He had requested a "cream-filled cake" I wasn't sure how to proceed here either. I decided on Saturday night I just didn't think it was possible because I didn't think we could fit it in the fridge where it would need to be with cream filling.

His Aunt Christy set about cleaning the fridge out and made a space. She made his wildest dreams come true.

Where mother's fail, aunties come through.

So....

I made vanilla pudding with half the milk and then folded in whipped topping. I didn't want to try to cut the cakes in half and fill them so we filled a frosting bag with the pudding mixture and put on our biggest frosting tip and plunged the tip into the cake and squeezed the cream filling into the cake at random intervals. He had lots of fun with that. We frosted the cake with canned chocolate frosting and then started making it look fort-like.

He came up with the idea for the cannons and the flags. I just mainly supervised. He was so happy with the end result.

And that cream filling? so good!