On behalf of Noah and our entire family, I'd like to thank each and every one of you who prayed, sent cards/gifts/emails/messages, visited, or showed love in any other way to make our dear boy's big day so special. He held up better during his party than we ever would have anticipated and he had a wonderful, wonderful birthday!!!
Here are some pictures from his party.
Lego brick party goody bags. I used plain inexpensive colored bags from Walmart and added construction paper circles. I glued them on with foam pop-dots and they had a really cute 3D look. Noah was so tickled by all of the little details and decorations which made it worth it to go all out with a really detailed party. For weeks ahead he was telling people, "My mommy is making me Lego juice boxes and Lego bags and Lego crayons and even CHOCOLATE LEGOS!!!" It cracked us all up and I set about making as many Lego-ish things as I could think of or find online!!
Above and below are pictures of our Lego punchboards. These were made out of posterboard and hung from a PVC frame that the boys made out of scrap PVC we had at the house. I cut the circles from the posterboard then glued tissue paper to the backs of the boards. I put a prize/party favor on each circle (on the back of the board). Brown paper lunch sacks taped to the back of each circle held the prizes in place until the children punched their fists through the circles to grab their prizes. (If you are counting the circles, yes we DID have 20 children LOL. It was a bit of a zoo but Noah has a lot of little friends and I couldn't see a reason not to include all of them!)
We had three sets of these (blue, yellow, and green) which my big boys switched out as they were used. Everyone got to punch for a prize after every game. The prizes were homemade Lego minifig crayons, sheets of Lego stickers, and those big punchball balloons. They absolutely LOVED this and it was a fun change from our typical pinatas. They put their prizes into their goody bags as they went so there were no lost prizes.
When the guests arrived, they could get started with a "create your own Minifig" activity page I printed from the internet. Above Sarah works on her minifig page. Noah's wonderful teacher from his art class at Michael's offered to come do face painting and the children took turns getting their faces (or arms or whatever) painted during the coloring activity. Below Mary Faith is sporting her current silly "camera face" while getting a purple unicorn painted on her arm. :-) Noah got both cheeks and both arms painted!!
It was easy and inexpensive to decorate because we could just use plain primary color table goods and decorations. I found these red/blue/yellow pennants at Walmart and we hung them EVERYWHERE. I printed out minifigs with the number seven on their shirts and added them to dress up the banners a bit.
The first game was actually a set of two games. I had a couple of these targets set up and half the children tossed Duplos at the targets while the other half played a different game - we got clear flexible tubing from Lowe's and the children worked in pairs to drop a cup full of Legos into the tube and out into a cup being held by their partners. The tubing was not much bigger than the bricks and it had a curl too it, so this was more challenging and hilarious than it sounds!
Here's Noah using the punchboard after playing the first set of games. In this shot you can see the paper bags in back. He was in his wheelchair up until this point then on the floor until we did cake. The nice thing about the punchboard is that he could reach it from his chair and it was light enough for us to move over to him when he was on the floor. This really was the highlight of the party for the children - I probably could have made 100's of these and they wouldn't have tired of it! It was a lot of work to make them but I'm really, really glad I did three sets as one would have definitely left them wanting more.
The next game was Lego bingo. I made the bingo boards and we used pennies as markers. This was a very popular activity and we played twice. They would have gone on for many more rounds if we'd had time!!!
Noah doing the punch board after playing bingo.
Happy little birthday boy!!!!
The last game was a build-your-own car activity. The big boys helped me select a BUNCH of used Legos from www.brickmaster.com. We had sets of wheels on axles, seats, and steering wheels for each child, then tons and tons of other plain and specialty bricks so they could create the car of their dreams. I printed up some little award certificates and made up awards for each child as they built (things like Best Use of Flames, Fastest Looking, etc.) When they finished we had an award ceremony and they got to put their cars into their bags to take home.
Noah working on his car.
Here is Noah with his nearly completed car. He won "Best Use of Flames" because he had little flames ALL OVER the car LOL. (He added even more after I took this picture!) He said this was the best party game and it was obvious his friends felt the same way. I think they spent at least 30 minutes working on this!
Lunch was next. I kept it very light and simple so that we wouldn't be eating a bunch of amazing stuff in front of Noah. A friend brought over a stop-motion Lego movie which they watched during lunch so that Noah wasn't bored. From back to front:
1. Adorable little Lego-print "french fry boxes" with minifig faces on the fronts. I printed these out from the internet and assembled them. They were filled with assorted crackers. Each child grabbed one of these first.
2. Trays with squares of assorted meats and cheeses to go with the crackers.
3. Cubes of watermelon and skewers so kids could make their own watermelon shish kabobs. I printed out little cupcake toppers and taped them on the skewers to make them cuter.
We also had juice boxes (for my apple juice box boy!) that I covered with construction paper. I added circles with foam pop-dots and they looked just like giant Lego bricks.
Since Noah can have tiny nibbles of chocolate, I made a bunch of chocolate Lego bricks. We had white, milk, dark, and mixed/marbled.
This is hand sanitizer that everyone used when they came in the door. I got a plastic soap dispenser bottle from Walmart and added generic hand gel layered with Legos. I think they gelled their hands about three times more often than needed just because there were Legos in there LOL.
This was the table centerpiece. The jars of Legos were the ones we eventually used for the car building activity. The boys had sorted them into jars of wheels, plain bricks, essentials (steering wheels, seats, etc), clear "glass" for windows and windshields, and special pieces. This made it easy to go around and distribute the types of bricks evenly on the tablecloth so that we didn't have all of the cool stuff at one end.
Mommy and the birthday boy.
We did presents after lunch. This was his big present from Jeff and I and my parents - a Lego castle set with a red Lego dragon!!!
Tip Top Cake Shop did the cake through Icing Smiles. The baker knew he was getting a castle for his birthday and she made this gorgeous (and yummy) castle cake!! As you can see below, Noah thought it was fantastic! Even though he can only have a taste of the frosting and can't eat any of it, my sweet boy always puts great stock in having a neat birthday cake for his friends to enjoy.
While the games and activities were fun, it was the friends and loved ones who really made the day special for Noah. He loves people so much and it was definitely a day full of hugs!
Noah was beyond exhausted by the end of the party but it was worth every ounce of energy he spent. Last night when we were snuggling in his bed he thanked me for the party and told me that I'd made all his dreams come true. It was very precious and I couldn't have asked for anything better. It was absolutely worth every bit of work to see him smiling and laughing and having so much fun with his friends!!
Blessings,
Kate
