We celebrated Jac0b’s 9th birthday (actually later this week) on Sunday with a pirate party and with some https://jumpersnrentals.com/riverside/ bouncers in Riverside. It was his choice a month ago and I loved that Friday happened to be Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Friday totally pumped us up for the party. I decorated Saturday afternoon knowing that Sunday after church would be totally insane. I loved having our new table with the two leaves–I was able to seat all 10 kids! Normally I’m cobbling together a few tables to make everything work but this was great to have.
It’s so hard to tell in pictures but it looked like the table was a ship. We had the fan blowing and the pennant was even blowing in the wind like sails.
I got everything on Amazon last week. I was so happy when everything went so well together. I’ll list them all at the bottom.
The party was in the afternoon so I kept the food simple with some cute signs I printed, the team from kids birthday parties in Las Vegas (http://www.jumpersjungle.com/las-vegas/) kept the kids entertained.
For the games, we decided to keep it simple and go old school.
First was the tug of war. I think this was everyone’s favorite game.
This picture is fuzzy because I had to zoom in so much but you just have to see Lexi’s victory face after the girls won the first round:
My girl is nothing if not competitive.
Next we did a few iterations of walk the plank–they had to hop and walk backwards. I think a few of them thought it was lame, but everyone got candy when they got to the end so it was worth it. If only our pool wasn’t freezing cold, it would have been awesome to do as a pool game.
The next game was a real treasure hunt. We hid 10 pennies in a huge container of rice at a time. Each one had 20 seconds to find as many as they could. It’s harder than it sounds! I think the most anyone got was 7.
Next up was the ship pinata which was entertaining, as always. Emma still talks about the princess castle she had at her 3rd birthday party (<--yes, I blogged about it 9 years ago) and all the candy fell on her head. She cried and cried and apparently was traumatized seeing that 9 years later she's still talking about it!
Cake, ice cream and presents of course are a must.
I can’t pass by this part of the recap without a little extra transparency. Jac0b was–something–at a few parts of the party. Overall, he seemed to be having a fantastic time. But at a few moments he seemed overwhelmed? Holding back because of his ADHD meds? Being triggered back to his past? I don’t know and this is the hard part of adopting an older child. I don’t have all the pieces to know what was going on. I would love to hear other adoptive parents experiences with first celebrations.
According to him this was his very first party. Even in foster care, they didn’t do big parties so I think the most he’s had is a cake with family. Even so, he assures me he had fun at the party and liked everything. He was zooming around on that scooter all evening, shooting everyone with the nerf guns and shuttling his new remote control Jeep when it was charged.
I know big themed parties aren’t a must for childhood, but it’s definitely part of our family culture. I have fun doing them and I can’t even tell you how lucky I feel to get to give him his first–hopefully just the first of many!
Resources:
- I used the Rapscallion font and layered a black and red rectangle shape underneath to create the tags.
- Gold cups were found in a fall pack of cups at Walmart
- Here is my Pirate Party Pinterest Board with most of these ideas
From Amazon: