Happy Birthday AGAIN!

It sure makes for an interesting start of summer with two back-to-back birthdays in the house.  But this year being in Naperville I was able to change things up a bit and give the kids parties they ADORED with much less effort on my part.  There are so many places out here that cater to kids parties.  They are not only BETTER than anything I could plan without herculean effort, but they are far, far CHEAPER than anything I could do on my own (again, without herculean effort). 

Today we celebrated Jack.  Molly, Ben and 12 of his buddies joined him for a morning of laser tag, arcade games, pizza and cake, and Marc and I had a total blast watching them live it up.  I think it was birthday Jack will remember for a long time to come.

I got to bed late after wrapping presents and finishing up some birthday details, only to be woken by the birthday boy at 3am.  He was clearly overwrought with the thought that his presents were right downstairs and his birthday was mere hours away.  Here's how the rest of the night went.

3:00am: "Mom?  Can I sleep with you and Dad?"
3:30am: "Mom?  Can I have a drink of water?"
4:00am: "Mom?  My stomach is killing me.  Can I have some Gas X?"
4:30am: "Mom?  I really can't sleep at ALL"
5:00am: "Mom?  It's five o'clock - can I open my presents now?"
5:30am:"Jack?  You really need to go back to your own bed because I can't sleep with your bony knees in my back"
6:00am:"Mom? The sun is up!  Can we go downstairs now?"
6:30am:"Mom? I just can't take it anymore!"
7:00am:"Mom?  PLEASE!!!! Can I open my presents now???"

At this point I would have ripped out my own eyelashes for some uninterrupted sleep, so I sent the child downstairs, without so much as a photograph of his birthday setup, and rolled over to catch some zzzs.

7:20am: "Mom?  YOU'RE THE BEST!!!  I LOVE YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!"

Clearly I hit a homerun with the gifts.  It wasn't too hard, being that he's been begging for a few of them for so long it was getting to be like a broken record!

This is all I got of the birthday booty...

The big gift was his "sparring gear" for karate.  It protects him from his head to his toes so he can spar with otehr kids at his belt level.  I think he would have worn those gloves all day if he didn't already have plans!

And then it was on to the PARTY!!

This year, Jack came up with his party plan all by himself.  He wanted a James Bond spy party.

I was hoping to get away with a generic "Jack's Turning Nine!" theme, but I'm a sucker for a good theme and he roped me right in with his spy-riffic ideas. 

Of course we had to start the festivities weeks before with themed invitations.  I designed them in Photoshop and printed them as 5x7 photos at Costco.  I think they ended up costing $4 (sweet!!).  I chose the colors and size based on envelopes I already had that I wanted to use up, and I think they turned out pretty well.

I used a free font from dafont.com to make labels for the envelopes and the good ole USPS was kind enough to have matching stamps on hand!

I had all sorts of ideas for spy themed cupcakes, but nothing required the minimal effort I was willing to put in ;).  Jack loves Reeses peanut butter cups, so I went with a Betty Crocker chocolate boxed mix and homemade peanut butter frosting.  They were tasty, but might have been a tad dry on account of "someone" (and by that I mean ME!) forgetting to set the oven timer.  To spiff up the overcooked cuppies, I whipped up some cupcake toppers from the same artwork I used on the invitations.  I just printed them, punched them out, and stuck them to popsicle sticks (because that's what I had lying around in my craft stash.  You could also use lollipop sticks or toothpicks).

I got a little bling going on with some prismatic paper I picked up at Target for 99 cents.  Love me some Target!

For favors, we got each of our "Secret Agents" a pair of spy sunglasses that allow the wearer to see behind them courtesy of tiny mirrors in the corners.  We paired those with some fun squirt guns (also 99 cents, also from Target!) and tucked them inside a manila envelope marked TOP SECRET and CONFIDENTIAL.

They helped our party goers become one with their inner superspy.  Case in point, my three little superspies, posing before the party...

{Disclaimer: Do you like how I just glossed over the fact that anti-gun ME is GIVING guns away to children all over town?  It kinda goes without saying that the MALLETT FAMILY BAN ON GUNS (initiated by yours truly) has been lifted for a variety of reasons.  Age and maturity are two of them.  Also because every third grader in town has an arsenal of Nerf and water pistols/launchers/sprayers/blasters and Jack just wanted to PLAY with them, the same way Marc loved playing with his GI Joes when he was a kid.  At this point (and in similar fashion to my Barbie-Ban lift at Christmas) I feel I've properly indoctrinated them about the perils of violence and the benefits of peace and kindness.  And they still want to play target practice with each other.  Desperately.  I don't want to create kids that crave guns for the sole reason that they were denied them on principle, because in the end, guns are not violent - people are..  So for the time being, we are beta-testing a lift to the gun embargo. We will see where it goes.}

And then it was off to laser tag!

(to be continued tomorrow)