The Great American Race Birthday Party

Shortly after school let out, our son attended a really fun birthday party for Parker at a local park.  ("Parker's party at the park" - say that 5 times fast.)  I am blogging about it here because it was such a really fun party theme idea, and it's one our daughter would like to replicate.  She and I helped with some of the games and challenge events. Parker's mom went over the top planning ten activities that took much longer than she expected.  She even provided matching shirts to identity which boys were pairs, with a different color shirt for each team. That particular detail was specially ironic to me because we were late arriving to the party because my could not find any shirts and shorts that matched, and he had tried on a dozen items by the time we gave up, and I drove him to the party is mismatched clothing, only to have him change shirts as soon as he arrived.  Ha!

Each team has to complete each event successfully in the order specified by the moderator who sat in the middle of the park.  Each team would receive a slip of paper providing the instructions and location of their next challenge event.  When that event was successfully completed, then the team would run back to the moderator and get their next assignment.  That way, each team was working on a different challenge at different times so as not to get bottle-necked at one activity.  Whichever team finished all ten activities first won. Out of the ten activities, some were hard and some were really hard for each team, but none were easy, and each team would consider different activities to be the hardest.

One of the neatest activities involved writing 15 words of affirmation on a poster designated for each kid.  Some kids were cheaters about it, writing things like nice 15 times or you are very, very, very, (12 total "very"s).....cool on each kid's poster.  But other kids wrote some really thoughtful comments, and those touched my son far more than I expected them too. He wanted me to read all the nice things people had said about him again that night before bedtime. Words of affirmation are my number one love language, so I totally get his desire to read them over and over.