Give Me a Mom Patch: Host a Child's Birthday Party

I realize that we're a bit late to this game, and still haven't managed to actually let other kids in the house during a birthday party. Following my sister's example, we plan on doing "friend" parties every four years. So we celebrated with friends when he turned four, and now that he's eight, we had to do it again.

He wanted a camping theme, and as we have most of the stuff for it, (and we love camping) we said YES! He invited five friends and all were able to make it. As I'm a little wary of posting pictures of other people's kids on my blog with no permission, I'm only showing the ones with my kids only. But believe me, we had six 7- and 8-year olds and Ollie. They were all adorable.

The kids made their own trail mix...


...decorated wood slice necklaces...


...shot bows and arrows (the PVC bows worked out great, the arrows could use an improved design)...


Ollie may have pouted a bit.






We also roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.


Not pictured was the fishing, wherein the boys cast a fishing pole into a baby pool full of 20 goldfish. Only six goldfish survived. (See above about seven little boys.) We also had sleeping bag races, which were a bit harder than you'd think. Finally, we ate Oreo pie for dessert. Good thing because it was HOT.

Was it hard (ahem) for us? Of course. Chuck and I think two hours would have been much better than our three. But we survived. Good thing we have four years to recover!