January 2013 - Benjamin turns 6

Once again it's blog catch up time. I do this blog to keep my far away family up to date, and as a way for me to keep track of what my kids have been up to over the years. But sometimes I wonder how much longer I will keep trying to update this as it is getting harder & harder to find time!! Benjamin keeps us very busy and I'm sure once Mae is older her activities will increase too. Right now Ben goes to walk-jog-run club after school on Mondays, Tuesday it's swim lessons (for him and Mae), Wednesdays it's Awanas, Thursdays it's gymnastics, Friday we have OFF then Saturday AM it's soccer and Sundays church! And after all those weekday activities we also get to squish in homework! Luckily he is excelling at school in term of academics so homework doesn't take too long. He is already reading chapter books (with pictures), is doing double & triple digit addition and some multiplication. The reading is awesome as he reads to his sis in the car for us when we go places and now if he wants to play any video games on the weekend or watch a show - he has to read the equivalent minutes first! Anyways, this post is to be about his long ago birthday party.

This years theme was a spy party. Benjamin and I discuss his themes and what he thinks would be fun to do. It makes my planning a little easier having such a creative child and it's a lot of fun getting him involved with the idea planning.

When the children showed up, they were instantly given their disguises (mustache) and were fingerprinted for their ID cards - with their spy names. Benjamin created these names and also made sure to tell each spy what his power was :) Some names were obvious (Super smash, invisible man, super speed), others required more thinking (Speed Head could take his head off and throw it at his targets, I don't remember what Rip Ripper could do).

 

 

Once all had arrived, I sat them down and informed them that we would be going through spy training. Once they were adequately trained, they would be given their mission and the items required to complete this mission.

Training session #1: Learning to pass secret messages. We all sat in a circle and whispered a 'message' around the circle. Took them about 3 times to master this.

Training session #2: Learning to freeze like a spy. This is also known as freeze dance with spy music :)

 

 Training session #3: Locate objects. They were given a grid of 9 items and they had to find each of these ...by digging through a large container of jello. Once their sheet was filled, they brought it to me where I gave them a piece of paper with a #  and 1 or 2 words.

Training session #4: Solve secret messages. The boys had to work together and put all of their pieces of paper in numerical order which then gave them a clue "Mission: Stop the the bombs (pop the balloons)". They ran through the house finding all of our black decoration balloons and proceeded to pop them. Some of them had another paper with words and a # on it. So at the end of that....they again put their words together which gave them a clue and ended up leading them to the laundry room where they found their spy gear needed for their final mission.

 

 Each child was given a manilla "Top Secret" envelope which contained a PVC marshmallow shooter, a bag of marshmallows, fake spy glasses and other items I am completely blanking on right now (this is what happens when the blog is written 3months late!). We had stickers for them to decorate their shooters with then they were sent into the backyard to shoot the bad guys (each other).

Finally it was lunch, cake time (cake pops I made as little bombs), gifts and then pinata time (I had made a black bomb pinata with the word BOOM on it).

 

 As you can guess - Benjamin loved his party once again!