Peter's Lego Birthday Party, September 2015

Peter's blue-eyed grin when he saw how I had transformed him into a lego minifigure for his birthday invitation almost made the pain of the emergency c-section that preceded his actual birth worth it. 

I originally designed this invitation for Peter, but since then, I've created personalized minifigures with a variety of hairstyles and clothing and accessories and even light sabers. (My favorite was a lego stormtrooper that I made to say "This is the birthday party you're looking for!")  If you have a lego lover that would like a personalized invitation, go to my etsy shop here

I think this is one of the first parties I've planned for the under-ten set that didn't involve a "craft project" like painting t-shirts or sewing scarves or rolling around in glitter as part of the party. When I made this fact known to Eric he reminded me that the older kids and I had stayed up late into the night before the party making homemade lego gummies, so he was still counting it as a craft project. 

Our huge lego brick piñata was the quickest, easiest, most indestructible piñata I've ever made. We just wrapped up a diaper box in a red plastic tablecloth and then glued on the tops of red plastic cups. Bam. Lego piñata. 

Each of the kids whacked that over-sized brick with all of their might, but it wouldn't break open until Holden, who towered over the little kids like some sort of pinata-obliterating Goliath, smacked it with an actual baseball bat several times with no blindfold on.

One of our more extroverted partygoers kept yelling, "It's rigged! It's rigged!" (Why would we rig a birthday pinata? I'm not sure. But the kid wouldn't stop yelling until he was  showered in minifigures and candy. Then he stopped complaining.)

For their party favor, each child received a basket into which I had glued a flat lego base. They also received a bag of crayons shaped like minifigures, lego gummies, a mold to make their own lego gummies and the recipe for lego gummies (Eric says I need to stop saying the word "gummies" now.)

We divided the kids into teams and then a "builder" from each team had to build a certain object. The other members of their team tried to guess what they had built before the other teams guessed to get a point. 

We played our own lego-based take on the game "Hungry Hungry Hippos" at the church gym across the street from our house. Our party guests each had to take turns scooting out to the middle of the gym and trying to bring back as may legos as possible back to their corner.

The only rule was that they had to be on their scooter the whole time. Most of the kids struggled to bring the legos back to their team's corner while trying to maneuver the scooter with their arms.

The winning team was lucky enough to have a team member who thoughtfully considered how to be able to have his hands free, but still bring back a load of legos to his team. He sat on his scooter, scooped up legos into a big pile in his shirt and then happily scooted back to his team.

For our final party game, we played Ultimate Lego Head, which is like Ultimate Frisbee, but played with an oversized yellow head. It was mighty funny to watch the kids toss the giant plastic cranium while screaming and yelling and running around.

The lego head cake was created out of two dome-shaped ice cream cakes that were sandwiched together. I used vanilla cake with vanilla ice cream for one half and chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream for the other half. The face was made from edible black fondant.

(I'll refrain from making any Biblical allusions the cake on the platter brought to mind.)