Sammy's pirate birthday party

So, three days before my due date with our baby girl, we hosted Sammy's 5th birthday party. I have a way of timing things, don't I? I thought I'd keep it simple...I really did, but it kept growing. It started with ideas from this blogger who created lots of free printables for pirate themed parties. Aren't these cupcate wrappers and tiny pirate ship sails cute? I thought it would be good to have cupcakes instead of a cake since we were having the part at our local playground.

Here they are in all their little pirate ship glory. I caved and used canned frosting because the rest of the decorations took me so much time, but then this morning I ran out of frosting halfway through icing them. My dear friend Brigitte came over and whipped up a batch of incredible homemade chocolate frosting and everyone said they were the best cupcakes ever. She's good...that Brigitte.

When the pirates got to the park, I handed them a treasure map (made from tea-soaked paper which had a map of our park drawn on it) which showed them an obstacle course that they had to run around the park in order to get their treasure. They really liked that part. The girls all wanted to run it together. They are SO at that age.

This is the treasure bag I made for each boy (this was not my best one) out of felt and leather string. When they had run the obstacle course, they received their bag filled with their pirate loot: an eye patch, a gold earring, some chunks of gold (spray-painted rocks) gold chocolate coins, and a few other gold candy things not-pictured here. I was making these stupid bags until about 2 minutes before the party started. They were also supposed to be "easy" but making 25 of anything does take a bit of time.

This is Siah. Just in case you wondered, you should never have a pirate themed birthday without Siah. Look at that hair! Isn't he the cutest pirate ever?

These are some of Sammy's favorite boys: Gabriel, Ganesh, and Siah. They are all a year older than him, but they have accepted him into their little club at school which they call the "boys camp army". He was very happy that the boys camp army was all in attendance.

Jack and Damen are also darn cute little pirates. Here they are sporting their patches and earrings (Damen brought that hat from home).

We played a game where they threw cannons (foil balls) onto the other team's side until Matt yelled "time!" Then we counted to see which team had the most cannons on the other team's side. I'm not sure if the proper winner was ever really determined, but they loved the cannons.

We've never had this many kids at a party. I invited so many people because I assumed that with the holiday weekend lots of people would not be available, but suprisingly they ALL were! So we had 22 kids in attendance and it was a blast.

We played another game where the kids threw water balloons at Matt: the "bad pirate". We blew up about 150 water balloons last night (again...not so easy...what was I thinking???) and of course, that game lasted about 2 minutes because kids can go through water balloons VERY quickly. But it has become a tradition now. You may remember that we threw water balloons at Matt at Sammy's birthday last year! He's a good sport.

Claire with her life-long buddies Josh Handy and Annabel.

Claire and Annabel.

Baby Sammy Handy who our Sammy adores.

The pizza. We got two of these. This picture does not do it justice, but this box is HUGE!

We gave out foam swords from the dollar store. I held off until near the end to pass them out because I knew this would turn the party into a never-ending bloody battle. And it did. But they liked it.

Captain Matt.

The presents were opened.

Look at this one! Hilarious!

It was from Zoe and Dillon. This 2 foot tall remote control dinosaur was inside and it was vicious! Sammy will be terrorizing the family with this forever.

We paused to sing happy birthday and eat the cupcakes near the end. Sammy was shy but liked it at the same time. He loves when people sing Happy Birthday to him. Isn't he funny? He's my best little 5 year old. I love him so much. Even though he did have a massive sugar-high/tiredness breakdown (or 5 of them) after the birthday party was over. I'm glad he had a good time.

And this is the view from my pillow staring at the wall which is where I was 5 minutes after the party. That's the remote to our window air conditioner under the blue pillow. I sleep with that thing in my hand now.

I had so many contractions during the party that I was sure our baby was going to come out right there during the party. But now they have stopped. So... now we wait. We're ready little one! Your big brother has been properly celebrated and there is a scary dinosaur toy waiting to greet you, so you can come anytime now. You might as well. I'm sure by now you know what you're getting into being born into this family. ;)