The theme of Corbin's party was Ninjago. The boys love everything Ninjago and can play for hours with their little Ninjago Lego men. (ninja + lego = ninjago) This cake was almost the death of me. Mostly because I had to make the cake with everyone at home. All of us at home at the same time is challenging enough when there's nothing that has to get done. The place is on the cozy side, so I can get claustrophobic and stir-crazy really fast when sharing the space with the whole family. To top it off, we celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday and the party was on Saturday. We didn't host Thanksgiving, but it was potluck style, so there was cooking to do. I also needed to bake cakes that morning (2 square and 1 small round) from scratch. Each cake had to bake separately since the oven isn't that big. That was almost 3 hours of baking time. As soon as that was done, it was time to do stuffing (1 more hour of baking time which caused me to fear for my oven's life) and broccoli salad (enough to feed 15 adults).
No wonder I was freaking out by Friday afternoon when it was time to make the cake actually look like something! All the while, having the kids watch and comment on how I should do it and how it looks weird and how I'm using the wrong colors. I may or may not have had to go on a "Mommy timeout" trip down and back up the stairs. Lesson learned: do not decorate cake while children are at home (unless they're sleeping). Do not. If the birthday falls the weekend of Thanksgiving break, do the party a different weekend. Seriously.
All that said, we woke up Saturday morning 2 hours until party time, rushed around and got it all done and I'm so glad we did it. It was a blast! The kids had so much fun and I loved seeing them enjoy it all.
We had a few party activities. Color the Ninjago guy and decorate a ninja throwing star (shout out to Jeremy for helping me make them last night!) Then, we took turns throwing ninja stars at a target. I was surprised by how big of a hit this was. After they all had a few turns, we made it a little harder by spinning them around a few times and called it spinjitsu (just like real Ninjago guys).
Next, Sensei Wu made an appearance and led us in a game of "Sensei Says." Before he left, he also let us borrow his hat and his beard for an awesome photo opp!
Isn't this hat awesome? I saw this idea on some random blog and thought it would be fun, but had no idea where to get the hat. I posted a pic on FB asking if any of my friends here happened to have a hat like this. Not even an hour later, a hat was secured for the party!
Then, it was time for cake! I love how excited the kids got when they walked in and saw the Green Ninja cake. It made all that craziness of Thursday and Friday totally worth it. They all loved it when we took his head off to cut the cake as well.
To keep the kids entertained, we let Corbin open his presents. This is always a debate. Do we do the party British style and set the presents aside, opening them after everyone has left or do we just let the kid dig in, American style? I totally understand the British style, especially when the kids are too young to realize why only one kid is opening presents (and you skip the risk of your kid saying that he doesn't like this or that and embarrassing everyone).
This party only lasted an hour and a half. It was just perfect. Not too short, not too long. Everyone arrived and left happy. Good day!
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