Rule #162: You're never too young for a rescue party

We celebrated Graham's third birthday on Saturday. We were hoping for good weather, because we really wanted to have the party outside. Having an outside party in the middle of October is a little risky, but it worked out last year and we were lucky again. It was perfect weather!

The lemons are supposed to be gears. You know, for the tech element :)

Graham woke up to a note.

I should explain. Graham wanted a Skylanders birthday party. Skylanders is a video game. There are different figures that you buy to put on a special portal and then you play those characters on the screen. And Kaos had stolen them all!! I was nervous that Graham would be too young to understand that he would get all of his skylanders back at the party. I was afraid he would be too sad. But he was fine. Evan was super excited! He thought it was the greatest thing and read that note over and over again all morning long! Since he's learning to read (and getting really good at it) he would read each individual "ha" It was hysterical to listen to.  "Mwa. ha. ha. ha. ha."

There are 8 elements in Skylanders. We had games or food for each element in order to rescue Graham's skylanders. Alex dressed up as Kaos at the beginning of the party. Graham didn't really understand why Alex had a big black robe on, and because it was such a beautiful day Alex was sweating to death. So he wasn't Kaos for very long. :)

We had Pin the eye on Eyebrawl. Neither Graham or Evan wore the blindfold. But all the other kids did. :)

There was also Trigger Happy's shoot out. We put pictures of monsters from the video game on cans and jugs for the kids to shoot using Trigger Happy's guns. It was harder than we thought it would be. The cans would knock over, but the milk jugs required a lot of force. Sometimes if they hit it, I called it good enough and would knock it over with my hands. :) The little kids ended up getting REALLY close to the cans. But they had a good time.

All Graham really wanted was the candy. Since this was his party we jumped numbers and went to Crusher and Prism Brakes game. They were surrounded by pretzels and crushed candy. Graham had to eat them free. :) He thought it was a great game.

In the video game there are tiny monsters called Chompies. They are green with big mouths. We used Chompies for two games.

For air they had to keep the chompies in the air for 10 seconds to free the air skylanders.

For the life element, they had to smash the Chompies. For the record, Graham and Evan wanted me to make Infuego Chompies (red) and Frigid Chompies (blue) I made one of each, but ran out of time to color the mouths of the rest of the Chompies. But I think they turned out cute anyway.

To free the water Skylanders we had the kids do a water relay. They were pulled in the wagon on our bumpy grass to a bucket full of water. They had to fill their cups and try not to spill too much water on the bumpy ride home. In order to set the skylanders free they had to fill one of the containers with water.

Evan and Graham went first. They love being pulled for a bumpy ride, we do it all the time. But they were NOT fans of water splashing on them! They both burst into tears. Sigh. The rest of the kids seemed to enjoy the water relay. Even Nana wanted to get in on the fun!

And then she fell out of the wagon! I'm so glad that she landed on the grass and not the cement. She's a trooper and got back into the wagon to finish the relay.

We also had a magic potion station. We found most of these awesome bottles at the DI and filled them with different kinds of soda. The kids had to pick three different kinds to mix together. If they dared to drink it the magic skylanders would be rescued.

I promise it was pop and not alcohol, despite the drunken look on Sanders face!

The last element was fire. This was where we sang Happy Birthday to my newest three year old and watched him blow out the candles!

The singing wasn't THAT bad.....

After cupcakes and ice cream (They were supposed to be cloud cupcakes) we opened presents. Thank you to everyone who came out and loved on my little Graham Cracker!