The Party

Mason's party was a huge success. It was hot outside, but I don't think the children minded it a bit. The top two pictures are out of place, but Blogger makes it so difficult in rearranging photos (and I forgot to add these two in order), so we'll just have to look at them first. And explain later.

Here is the candy stand in all its glory. This was our old lemonade stand that was yellow. I had the idea to have an old-fashioned birthday party for Mason and had visions of the lemonade stand becoming a candy shoppe. The children eagerly helped me scrub it clean and put the first coat of white paint on it.

I filled up a few jars with treats. We had circus peanuts, candy buttons (on paper), Dum-Dum lollipops, Peanut Chews, pink wintergreen mints, Andes mints, Atomic Fireballs, and rock candy. (The rock candy was actually "lump sugar" that I picked up at the Asian grocery store. I bought it for my herb tea, but decided we liked to eat it instead.)

The lollipops were the first to go. And the rock candy. The pink mints were not such a hit, but the kids did enjoy trying them.

We had all kinds of outdoor games available. We had (hard-boiled) eggs on a spoon race, a bean-bag toss, three-legged race,

sack races (I made bags out of burlap),

and a very mini-golf course. Joe found some frozen juice containers in our freezer and made "holes" with them. This game was the one that the kids loved and played over and over.

By the end of the party, we had seen great progress in the boys' skills.

The children earned "money" (wooden coins, see above) for playing and participating in the game stations. A coin for each game. If several kids played golf, we gave an extra coin for the winner of that game. With their money, they could visit the candy shoppe and buy candy. Each child had a little white paper gift bag to carry around to hold their coins and candy. They loved to shop. Carter was my good sport and tended the candy shoppe while the others played games.

Since it was so hot, we had rootbeer floats to cool us down. Followed by brownie sundaes.

The party favors we gave each child was a bag of school supplies, pocket tissues and a yo-yo. With school starting just a few short days later, and with the extremely affordable cost of school supplies, we thought it would be fun. The yo-yo's were cheapy $1 ones that I bought back at Easter time. I had a hard time finding yo-yo's for the boys and found them in the dollar bins at Target. (I eventually found real yo-yo's at Five Below.) The cheapy yo-yo's were to be returned to Target, but that never happened. As my luck would have it, I had just enough for the party.

That evening we sang to Mason and gave him a few more (small) gifts. At first he was not amused, but confused. Why on earth were we giving a boy with braces a can of mixed nuts?

Following my urging, he opened them anyway ...

and a snake popped out!

He said it was the best part of the day.