7ish AM: All children wide awake, a bizarre and unheard of hour for a Saturday. Aetheline woke me up by wetting the bed - while sleeping in MY bed. Gather sheets up and throw them in the wash.
Set up party table downstairs while kids dress - black tablecloth, silver star confetti strewn liberally on top, solar system mobile hung above.
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| I took this picture after I made my 'tester' version of the solar system craft. |
8 AM - Made pancakes for breakfast. Gui requested an octopus pancake.
9 AM - Print out the questions and clues for the space scavenger hunt, and hide the answers around the downstairs. My favorite spot - the clue I taped to the ceiling!
10:30 AM - Realize that guests will be arriving in an hour and a half. Throw all three children out to play in the snow so they will stop playing with the party stuff. Set the table with astronaut napkins, party hats, and paper cups. Double check craft supplies and list of party games. Put sheets in the dryer.
11 AM - Set out the Space Snack mix (cheerio 'orbits', pretzel sticks and goldfish 'rockets'), star and moon shape jello jigglers, and martian cookies (chow mein noodles and peanuts, coated with melted chocolate and butterscotch chips then spooned out and allowed to harden). Mix up a jug of Tang ("the drink of astronauts!") and another jug of Rocket Fuel (sprite poured over colored star shaped ice cubes).
11:30 AM - Pull the pre-made personal pizza crusts out of the freezer and prepare toppings for 'Planetary Pizzas'. Kids come back inside and Aetheline makes a mess of herself going after the Martian Cookies.
11:50 AM - Run downstairs to put one final touch on something before guests arrive. Come up and find a mysterious pair of snow pants, but no guest. (Still a mystery. Apparently a woman drove up, handed my Mom the snowpants and said "here's his snowpants" and drove away again. Mom thought that I was upstairs and assumed that said pants were for a child who must have just arrived - but there wasn't one.)
11:55 AM - Guests arrive! We wave goodbye to parents and go assemble our pizzas. While the pizzas are cooking, I hand the kids the scavenger hunt sheets. The scavenger hunt was a HUGE success - whenever things slowed down for a minute the kids went looking around for more answers, and enjoyed showing off how many questions they had filled in.
Noon - Lunch and silliness. No one ate much (except Gui - nothing stands between that kid and pizza), but there was a lot of fun goofing around. I enjoyed watching Gui with his friends and asking questions about school. One of the guests was a boy who has been alternately Gui best friend/nemesis since last year, and it was great to get to know him a little bit. He's a good match for Gui's energy level and attention span, but with a lot more pop culture and poop jokes, and without Gui's bibliophilia to slow him down a bit. I can see how the two of them would make classroom management difficult! Fortunately they are in different classes this year which, Gui says, gives them time to 'cool down' in between playing at recess. Trying to channel all the energy before it got out of hand, I suggested a modified game of charades where we took turns asking said class clown to act out a word while the others tried to guess what it was.
12:45 - Time to clean up the lunch stuff. Had the kids play "Launch the Satellite" with bean bags and a 'black hole' target. Explained how you need to throw the 'satellite' while spinning because every launch has to take the earth's rotation into account. Set up supplies for making the solar system craft.
1 PM - Did this for the next hour, while Pascal and Aetheline took a bath to clean the chocolate off of themselves.
Lots more talking - both guests want to be teachers when they grow up. Apparently this is a common ambition in first grade. Gui wants to be a computer game designer.
2 PM - Everyone agreed they wanted to play outside while their planets dried, so I ditched my other planned games and the kids went sledding. The snow is perfect for it, and it was a gorgeous sunny day outside. One guest, a girl, went out in a t-shirt, mittens and hat!
2:30 PM - Since it was so nice out, I decide to bring the cake and ice cream out on to the deck.
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| Mars and her moons, Phobos and Deimos. |
I lit the cake with 8 sparklers instead of candles, which was a lot of fun.
2:45 - We play 'Space Station Robot Arm' for gift giving time. Gui was blindfolded, and the guests took turns directing 'the robot' to find and open the presents.
3 PM - Guests parents arrive and I scramble to gather up the mobile supplies and planets so they can finish putting them together at home. The general agreement was that the party was awesome and it was too soon to leave. Best friend asks if next years party can be a sleepover! I say we'll think about it. Thank yous all around and off they go.
I spent the next hour or so cleaning (with a pounding headache) while Gui and Pascal played with Gui's presents - a air powered car (didn't work, I think they assembled it wrong but the screws were too stripped for me to fix it right away), and a Hexbug. By this point Aetheline started complaining and I realized she hadn't had a nap all day!
The boys wanted to play on the computer, so I had them put their goodies and gifts away first, then took my baby and my headache to bed. It was a fun and successful day all the way around, Gui was completely pleased with his first 'school friend' party, and I figured I'd earned a nap!
The boys wanted to play on the computer, so I had them put their goodies and gifts away first, then took my baby and my headache to bed. It was a fun and successful day all the way around, Gui was completely pleased with his first 'school friend' party, and I figured I'd earned a nap!
