Hammy's 4 year old Friend Birthday Party

The decorations you can kind of see in the background were 12-inch colorful circles cut from scrapbook paper.  My friend Sarah gave them to me after an activity at church they were used at.  Hammy loves circles.  So these delighted him to be the decorations for his polka dot party.  We also had about a dozen balloons just kicking around.  No streamers.  I ran out of time.

This boy here is the older brother of Hammy's friend.  We invited him along too.  Gabbers and he are in the same Primary class at church.  They have to be separated though (during class) because they talk too much.  haha

The bean bag toss.  A.K.A.  The sock toss. 

Even when you plan for two months in advance, sometimes life gets busy and you find yourself tossing your daughter's balled up beaded socks into empty bakery buckets instead of lovely circle shaped bean-bags as you previous daydreamed about.

There were two spots on the floor marked off with masking tape.  Everyone 5 and up had to toss from the further mark.  But Hammy and his friend would NOT be thought of as little and tossed also from the "big kid" mark.  This was by far, the most popular game, and the hardest to cheat at.  ;)

The prizes were the most brilliant last-minute idea EVER.  I went to the BX (store on base) and happened across the discounted Easter baskets.  I bought two.  One was $2.47 and the other was $1.57.  There was sidewalk chalk, a jump rope, a cute pink bucket hat, top spinners, jacks, candy, etc.  I divided them up and wrapped up a few of the bigger toys as prizes.  The smaller ended up being prizes for children that didn't win prizes in a game.

 musical chairs

This one is probably better for older children-- like 8 and up.  There weren't too many tears.  (Pookie is not actually crying here-- just being a spazz for the picture.)

If your twins decide it's a good idea to open the CD-rom drive and sit in it during the party, you may want to strap them into their high chairs and hand them some wrapping paper to play with.

And right here is where you imagine pictures of the Pin the Tail on the Donkey game.  Half the pictures showed that I indeed have had 7 kids in 8 years (ie. not your slim and trim mama) and the other half had me lecturing Pookie about cheating. 

The birthday cupcakes were a hit.  I hate cupcakes.  But my kids are thoroughly enchanted with them.  And since this was a party for Hammy, and not me, I honored his wish to have cupcakes instead of cake. 

They were lemon cake (from a cake mix) with yellow frosting (I followed the Wilton Buttercream recipe) and brightly colored sprinkles. 

I didn't get a picture of the presents or the goodie bags.  The goodie bags had Wal-Mart's Fruit Smiles fruit snacks (since they're circles), a balloon, a parachute animal for boys and butterfly sunglasses for girls, and a circle crayon we made out of melting broken pieces of crayons into mini-muffin tins.

Everyone had a blast and we had a good review on being good sports and playing honest.  lol