Party Time - Spidey Style!

Harrison's birthday party was this Saturday. My parents and little sister Katy arrived just in time from Virginia. We had 5 little boys over and it went quite well. Harrison was pretty tired (it was from 4:30-6:30 PM), so there were a few meltdowns (as you can see here).

Overall, it was a big success. My only regret was not taking enough pictures.

We did a Spiderman party because Harrison has been obsessed with Spiderman for almost a year now. (Before that it was Lightning McQueen and all things Cars). I had fun planning and creating all the Spiderman/spider activities. First, we did spider cookies.

Then a treasure hunt that led to Spiderman tee-shirts for all the boys. Here they all are shooting out webs like Spiderman.

We played games like pin Spiderman on the building and shooting the bad guys with webs (silly string).We made this hand-print spider craft (couldn't have handled 4 year-olds with black paint on their hands without my mom's help!) and we played 2 other spider games. I spent everyday last week working on the pinata, which turned out quite well, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, he wasn't as tough as he was good looking. Harrison went third and busted him open on his first hit. So there were still 3 boys that needed turns. We let them keep hitting the empty, broken pinata and poor Spiderman was completely unrecognizable by the end. Here he is before all the beating began.

The cake was fun to make too. When we were on the cake aisle I had notice the red velvet cake and thought that would be great because it matched the theme and it's Harrison's favorite color. But I wanted to let him pick. I was pretty happy when he also noticed it and picked it all on his own. I was laughing the whole time we were making it because it really was red ("blood red" name that movie!). No, we didn't have a terrible accident, he was just licking the beaters. (Don't mind the slightly white trash tank top, it was on sale at Wal-Mart and I had to get it because it said Rocket Scientist and that's his daddy's job - it's going to be an at-home only shirt). I noticed that I really enjoy the creative process, and I got a kick out of getting everything ready for this party. I also love themes and trying to make everything tie in. It was fun for me to plan it and fun to see the kids enjoy it all (of course I doubt they noticed half the details or understood why we were doing so many spider things!) After all that work, I asked Harrison what his favorite part was and he said climbing on top of his tree house. The boys would have been just as happy to play in the back yard the whole time!

Growing up we did friends parties every other year. As fun as this all was, I'm considering carrying on that tradition. We'll see. Harrison has already announced that he wants a Power Rangers party next. (Just like he's never seen Spiderman, I don't allow him to watch Power Rangers, but he still loves them. Marketing is a powerful thing!)