Back to School Luau Pool Party

So today was the big day.  The Back to School Luau Pool Party.  Except this morning we weren’t very sure there was going to be a Back to School Luau Pool Party.  I was woken up by a storm at 3:30am last night and when I woke up this morning there was nothing but storms predicted starting at 10am.  Even our local weatherman suggested we postpone the party.  Seriously?  Do you guys have a weatherman as awesome as ours?

 

But then I got to thinking about the fact that the predictions for Sunday were just as stormy and I was out of sunny free weekends so we were just going to have the party indoors if we had rain.  I had to have a sit down with Scott about it.  You should have seen his face when I informed him for the first time that 14 girls had accepted our invite.  “I thought they only were having 2 or 3 friends each?!”  I think we went to take a few extra pills and we all started praying the rain away.  And God was good.  It didn’t rain a drop on us even though dark clouds loomed for hours.

If you didn’t catch this post on our plans, check it out because this party was brought to you by Pinterest.

Above is the wreath.  Let me tell you a secret.  That’s my pine cone wreath I made. I just stuck the umbrellas around it to hide them. Hopefully no one took notice.

Of course we had to hand out leis first thing.

And because we were going to have a total of SIXTEEN 6 and 8 year olds I decided we were going to need stations.  What if a few of them hated swimming?  Or they were fighting over floats?  Or the sun was too hot?  Or the water too cold?  These kids needed something to do!  So first up was “Make-a-lei Bay” where the kids made the lei hanging there on the sign.  Now, to tell you about these signs a bit.  Scott had some leftover MDF board.  I simply

1. Sprayed the signs white
2. Printed the lettering with the “Gilligan’s Island” font
3. Bought a large flower punch (actually bought for the leis) and hole punched some scrapbooking paper
4. Cut a strip of green scrapbooking paper and then cut slits to make grass and glued it on the edge so it hung over.

As for the craft, we made these.  I did A LOT of prep work before hand.  I can’t tell you how many flowers I stamped and hole punched.  A LOT.  Individually.  I also pre-cut the yarn and straws.  I will say it wasn’t a huge hit but there were a few girls that passed the time at Make-a-lei Bay.  I will say that the set up of the two children’s picnic tables was perfection.

We also had Palm Tree Piñata.  They had a blast with that.

The pool was of course Typhoon Lagoon.

Since we already had the fire pit, we bought the stuff to make S’mores and called it “Roasting Volcano”.

“Hawaiian Hula” was set up for hula hooping and hula dancing, to go along with the Luau music CD I picked up at Party City.

And finally there was the Jellyfish Jumper.  Simply our trampoline.  It ended up being well-visited.

We also did some general decoration around the pool with grass skirting.

 

Other fun things:

Tiki torches along our sidewalk.

Umbrella with grass skirt on it.

The watermelon shark which had blue jello and Swedish fish around it but those girls ate it faster than they could say “Justin Bieber”.  All props go to Scott for carving that bad boy.

We had snow cones.  I think most of the girls indulged in about 3 rounds of those.  You are welcome, parents 🙂

Hawaiian Punch.  Of course.

Fun plates, straws and umbrellas, of course!

I cropped this group picture pretty close because I wanted to show you one, I wore a flower in my hair.  You won’t catch me with one any other time.  I admit I felt a little like a Brit with a hat.  And even though that’s the exact opposite look and feel we were going for, I’m never going to complain about feeling British.  And two, we totally lucked out as one of the girls’ grandmothers owns one of the best bakeries in town (she made our wedding cake!) and she freely gave us these awesome iced flower cookies.  Amazing!

 

Overall, fantastic time was had by all.  Big thanks to our parents and my sister for helping pull it off.  We truly said goodbye to summer with a bang!