Curious George, shin guards, and rainbows

The soundtrack from the movie version of Curious George is pumping in the boys' room right now. Charlie is in love with this CD and with Curious George in general these days. I never knew Jack Johnson could be so very LOUD. These mellow numbers are not meant to be heard at volumes that hurt your brain. Ahhhhhg....Jack Johnson, stop freaking screaming at me about friendship and recycling!

Life is moving at a breakneck speed lately. We are now a two-soccer-game-per-weekend family. How in the world did that happen. It's nuts. Charlie is a hilarious soccer player. He claims to be playing defense, but really what he does is stay about ten feet from the ball at all times and kind of hustle around while cheering for other people to kick the ball. I couldn't make the most recent game, but Brandon said Charlie totally ran out of gas about halfway through. At one point during the game he actually leaned on the coach and started moaning. If only someone had thought to play some Curious George, then he would've gotten pumped!

Speaking of soccer...what's up with the oranges? I had no idea this was such a thing.

This past Saturday, we had two soccer games and two birthday parties, one of which we were hosting. Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is really my life, and not a commercial for a minivan.

So without further ado....

Rainbow birthday party pictures!

First we painted watercolor rainbows. Mellow songs from my rainbow mix CD played quietly in the background. This was a nice, calm way to start the party. Ahhhh...don't you just love little girls and how they will serenely paint rainbows on command?

We had a lego table for the boys just in case they didn't want to paint watercolor rainbows. And they didn't.

Decorations: We TPed our own tree in rainbow colors. Awesome! We also had balloons in rainbow colors. Joy!

We had a "rainbow walk." This was sort of like a cake walk. Kids walked in a circle to music. Whoever was on a special rainbow square when the music stopped could pick a few silly bands from a basket. DJ Teddy made this a little bit challenging, but still fun. The silly bands were a hit!

Rainbow silly bands!!

Rainbow scavenger hunt: We pretended like a leprechaun had left clues to finding the pot of gold he hid in our yard. Each clue led the kids to find a color of the rainbow. The first clue was "What rolls on the ground and holds something that cries? In it you'll find a red surprise." Then we hid a red ball in our stroller, along with the clue for the next object: an orange pumpkin hidden in our swing. The clue for that one was, "what flies through the air, but doesn't have wings? In it you'll find a little orange thing." Leprechaun poets we are not, but we had fun with it. Once they found all the colors of the rainbow, the leprechaun left them a clue to find the pot of gold. Each child got their own little bag of chocolate coins. Hooray! This was a big hit!

Then we ate pizza and hung out in the backyard for a little bit. After that we went inside to decorate the cake using tons of candy every color of the rainbow! Woo!

Teddy calls this cake "happy cake." I agree. Didn't the kids do a great job decorating? I may never decorate another cake again. They LOVED decorating it and they saved me lots of work!

Our party favor was the aforementioned CD of rainbow songs, a rainbow lollipop and the gold coins that the leprechaun left in our yard. I also let the kids help themselves to our gumball machine at various times throughout the party. Just call me Willy Wonka!

We had lots of fun. It was a very simple party, but a lot of love went into it. Those are the best parties in my opinion!

Rocket Birthday Party

With a kids ages 6, 4, and 17 months, birthday parties are quite the hot topic at our house. I thought it would be fun to post about birthday parties we've either had or have thought about having or would like to have in the future. Please feel free to share your own party ideas. I'm almost as birthday-party obsessed as my kids are and I would love to hear your ideas!

For Charlie's 4th birthday, we had a rocket/space-themed birthday party. It was a blast! (ha ha)

Here's what we did:

Decorations: I displayed space books around the kids' playroom (where most of the party took place). Books are a fun (and cheap) way to decorate and they double as a quiet party activity. I also had little astronaut figurines and any other toys having to do with space out on the playroom shelves for kids to play with at their leisure. The big centerpiece of the party was the cardboard rocket playhouse my parents gave Charlie as a birthday present. We let the kids color it with crayons and play inside it during the party.

• Activities: For parties, I always set up different centers for the kids to pick from when they arrive. I know I can feel uncomfortable when I go to parties...and I'm a grown up. I figure kids feel this way sometimes too, so it's nice to give them a choice of activities to get them feeling comfortable and in the party mood. Plus, when you're talking about young children, you can never make them all do the same activity at the same time. It's too hard. Giving them options is the way to go. For this party we had a playdough table, a craft table, books and space toys scattered around the playroom and the playhouse rocket. I was also brave and put the computer on a kids' space website for tech savvy kids to explore. Our computer is in the middle of the kids' playroom, so it was easy to monitor their use of the computer while the party was going on. I made sure to expand the screen on the computer so that no other toolbars/windows would be accessible to a preschoolers' wandering mouse. To do this, just go to your browser's toolbar and click "view" and then click "full screen."

Playdough table!

Craft:

We made planets by coloring round coffee filters with water-soluble markers and then spraying them with water. After our planets dried, we glued them to black paper and added star stickers. Too bad this picture is so bad, because this craft turned out really cool. Using blue and green markers makes the planets look like Earth, using red and orange can make them look like Jupiter? Mars? Who knows...the point is, they look planety and that's what you're going for.

Food:

Rocket sandwiches with baby carrot rocket boosters, stars and planets cheese and crackers.



Cake:

Your basic chocolate cake decorated to look like space. Adding plastic space guys and a space shuttle hopefully distracted from my less than professional cake decorating skills.

Grand Finale: We walked to a field near our house (one without lots of power lines or low-flying planes) and blasted off a real rocket! I had no idea these rockets even existed until one day when I was at Michaels getting supplies for the party and saw an aisle there labeled "Rockets." I was giddy with excitement to go down that aisle, let me tell you. These rockets are serious business and not for people like me who are afraid to open up a can of biscuits. Thankfully my husband was not scared to light the tiny little sticks of dynamite that are required to launch one of these babies.

Here's a video of our rocket launch:

Party Favors: Astronaut ice cream, of course! And I made a mix CD of songs about space using iTunes' "genius" feature. Just go on the iTunes website and it's pretty self-explanatory how you can find music that is about certain themes. I had fun picking the music for our "Space Jams" CD and it was great background music for our party as well. Here are a list of the songs on our CD if you're interested:

1. Rocketship Run by The Laurie Berkner Band


2. Nine Planets by Justin Roberts


3. Backyard Spaceship by Justin Roberts


4. Rocketship by Justin Roberts


5. Great Big Sun by Justin Roberts


6. Blast Off by Mikey's Band


7. The Solar System by Joel Media & Crew


8. Blast Off! by Rocknocerous


9. Pluto by Rocknocerous


10. Fly Me to the Moon by The Laurie Berkner Band


11. You Are My Sunshine by Elizabeth Mitchell


12. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star by Elizabeth Mitchell


13. Down to Earth by Peter Gabriel


14. Outer Space by Relax Kids

Did I mention that this is when my secret music crush on Justin Roberts began? Sigh...

Here's a picture of the actual Space Jams CD. I took a picture of some of Charlie's space toys and made a cool personalized label. Can you tell I live for this stuff?

Here's a video taken during the party when one of the space jams was really pumping. This will give you an idea of the space party milieu, if you will. That's me with the baby and the wet hair.