Does anyone else remember that little short from Sesame Street? Well, it pops in to my head every time one of my kids turns 6. And now it is Noah’s turn. He was so excited to have his birthday party ON his birthday. Even though he knew it meant no school friends could come. I called around and asked ahead of time to see who would be here. No one. 🙁 But, thankfully, we have lots of church friends who did stay in town, so it was all good in the end. Noah decided on a space party this year, and I had a blast making the invitations and figuring out which games to play. Of course, at times like these I do envy those of you who live in the States and can just order cool treat bag fillers and decorations from Oriental Trading, or even, gasp, drive to the Party Store and get everything you need in one fell swoop! But, I am always up for the challenge, and usually manage to make do with what I can find around here.
Noah chose Lion cereal for his birthday breakfast. It’s these chocolate and caramel flavored puffed rice cereal, that he absolutely loves. No one else likes it, though, so he got to eat the whole box by himself. Score! At 10 am, the party started, so it was a good thing I had stayed up until 2 am the night before getting almost everything ready. 🙂 Once again, Sophie totally came through and helped me with any last minute preparations. Love you, sweetie!
Noah was very excited to greet all his guests as they arrived, but sometimes he was so busy greeting one guest, he would miss the next one. 🙂 They played upstairs for a bit as we waited for everyone to come and then it was time to start their astronaut training. First, we tested their sense of balance by having them close their eyes and spin around in a circle as fast as they could. The rest of the kids counted how many seconds it took for them to fall down. Don’t worry, I made sure no one fell onto anything hard or poky! Sounds silly, but the kids loved it, and the winner only lasted 12 seconds. We practiced landing a rocket on the moon, and somehow ended up with rockets on the windowsill and on the front door! Only one aluminum foil asteroid made it through the field safely, but they all had fun tossing them around the room.
And decorating the plastic plate spaceships with glue and glitter resulted in lots of smiles and lots of glittery kids!
Seeing as how this isn’t my first rodeo, I wisely had the children go exploring on the distant planet for their own gifts before letting the birthday boy open his presents. The kids had to take turns, as the spaceship was pretty small, and there was only room for two at a time.
While on the planet, they had to search through strange floating rocks to find one sample of each foreign substance. But look out! There were aliens hiding in this floating rocks. (I found the coolest alien balloons at ToysRUs. They were round, and had three antennas poking up out of their heads!) They put all the collected samples in their specimen jars, flew back to Earth, and then we were ready for presents.
I love kids at this age. They are always so excited for the birthday kid to open THEIR present, and half the time they cant’ wait until the wrapping paper is off before they have blurted out what they got him. So cute!
Noah was very happy with all his fun new toys, and gave his friends lots of thank you hugs.
Since all the family was there as well, I went ahead and let him open the presents from us as well. To his delight, he now has the entire Playmobil Egyptian collection, minus the tomb robbers house. I know, I know, we needed more Playmobil in this house, like the Sahara needs more sand, but the kids play with it for HOURS, and a few new pieces every now and then, just adds to the time I get to work in peace while they play.
Thanks to the Family Fun site, I was able to make this awesome rocket cake for Noah.
The kids were very worried that the candles were going to burn the cake, but it was actually better than putting them on the cake.
The wax just dripped off onto the foil underneath. And since these were all American kids, they actually liked my frosting. 🙂 After cake, there was just time to play with all his new toys, before the moms came to pick them up.
While they were upstairs, I was in the kitchen whipping up the birthday boy’s requested lunch; tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. It was a rainy day, so that was what he ended up being in the mood for. He must have changed his mind 6 times, in the days leading up to his actual birthday. Glad he settled on something quick and easy, because I had to get the food on the table, run a couple of the party goers home, then rush back to pick up the kids and drive into Zurich.
Here in Switzerland, most children movies are for kids 6 and up. This includes all Disney movies. They are deemed too scary for children younger than that. So the fact that he was finally 6 was kind of a big deal. No longer would he be left at home, or with Mom, while all the other kids got to go off to the theater. And even better, Toy Story 3 was opening in Switzerland on.his.birthday! Of course, we had to go. We found the theater without too much trouble, although there was a small incident involving a non-working GPS, short tempers, and someone getting hung up on. But the end result was a parking spot just down the street from the theater, and us only being a few minutes late to pick up our reserved tickets.
It was pouring rain as we climbed out of the car, and the wind was driving it into us at an able. So even though we had on jackets and several umbrellas, we were soaked by the time we got to the front doors. Our shoes were making splonchy noises, and our pants were about as wet as if we had jumped in a pool. Seriously. And then, of course, we had to wait in line while some young adults in front of us tried to figure out where they should all sit, and how to pay for the 10 tickets they needed when only 4 of them were there with actual cash. I timed it using the handy clock hanging on the wall above the cashier’s head. We waited 15 minutes for this one transaction to take place. Naturally, this meant that our reservations had been wiped off the computer, because they were only saved until a certain time. She tried to get slightly snarky with me about it, but I just pointed out that we had been there punctually, and she quit talking. We still ended up with awesome seats, right in the middle of the theater and right behind the row of young adults who caused us to lose our reservations in the first place.
Sarah leaned over to me and asked, “Why are there so many grown ups here to watch a kids movie?” So I told her that they had been kids when the first one came out, and now they needed to find out what happened to Woody and his friends. Made sense to her. The movie was playing in 3-D, which the other kids had first seen with “How to Tame your Dragon”, but Noah hadn’t been old enough to see that yet. Watching his reaction as things started popping out of the screen was unforgettable. At one point, he actually jumped into my lap to get away from whatever was going to touch him. Classic! The movie was pretty scary at a couple of points, and very sad in a few more. We all got teary eyed, and we all laughed out loud. In other words, it was the perfect movie going experience. And even better, when we got out to the car, no parking ticket! (We had run over the time limit by just a bit.)
We got home just in time for dinner. Crepes is what he wanted, so we took a walk over to the farmer’s to get some fresh eggs, and then I whipped up a triple batch of goodness. Goes a lot faster now that I have two pans. He went to bed a very happy 6 year old. I love you so much, Little Guy! Happy Birthday!