Evan's Furry Friends Campout Birthday Party

While Evan and I were at CA Adventure together, we had this brainstorm about having a stuffed animal sleepover for his party.  It happened that at that moment, we were completing the Wilderness Explorer badge at the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail, so we were inspired to do it in a campout theme and have the animals earn badges.  We had fun thinking of things the animals could do and I loved the idea for Evan because he truly loves fuzzy little animals most of all.  I think we could have just had people drop stuffed animals off at our house to spend the night with no party and he would have been happy.  (Kaci, why don't you listen to yourself?!)  Of course, we weren't gonna not have a party because (well, according to one little friend of mine) I have "party superpowers."  I'm not sure that's 100% true, I am just crazy enough to try to do every idea that pops into my head and I have a lot of ideas popping into my head at all times.  I call it crazy brain.  Anyway, this post is not about my crazy brain but Evan's party.

I found this green mesh material at a thrift store and wha-la!  We had a tent!

The animals had a checklist to complete before they could get their ranger badges.  "Dog Tags" (making id tags out of shrinky dinks and ball chains), 

"Sleeping Bag" (tying a quick little fleece bag, again made out of some thrift store blankets), 

"Build a Shelter" (I put out random supplies for them to make a tent or shelter--I foolishly put out paint.  Don't put out paint.  It does come off of concrete with a lot of scrubbing.  And crying.), 

 "Build a Fire" (out of pretzel sticks, candy rocks, candy corn, and red hots, with chocolate frosting to hold it together),

 "Have an Adventure" (zipline, made out of a wire and a hanger),

 "Fishin' Hole" (Balloons in the pool and makeshift fishing poles using dowels and pool noodles.  I gave myself blisters on my fingers shoving prizes into the balloons for the kids to pop after they fished--bad idea!  The kids went crazy popping more balloons than they were supposed to, so we ran out, and it was a mess, and my fingers! 

 We played some games on the grass--Sam made a huge game board out of the sidewalk sections, each section had directions on it for what to do if you landed there.  We played "volleyball" on the ground with a beach ball, we did a memory game with the stuffed animal's names, and I had a few other ideas planned but kind of lost control of the crowd.

But in the end, the kids who wanted to earn their badges did, and no one died.  Oh! And I sort of blended the idea of ice cream cake and cupcakes together and made little cupcakes (filled the papers only a little bit) and pre-scooped ice cream on top, covered with magic shell and sprinkles, and we had a self-contained, no-utensils-necessary, no-last-minute-scooping little treat for all the kids.

 So, it was fun and creative and cute, but I definitely could have fine-tuned it or organized it better.  And I had to discipline my own kids multiple times in the middle of the chaos, so for the first time in the history of me and parties, I was ready for it to end early!  We sure had fun planning and enjoying the kids and their stuffed animals, and I was thankful for my friends and parents who helped a ton!  (Jeremy was out of town...we could have used him as the sheriff!)

You could watch this cute video we made of the party and then the shenanigans we had with the stuffed animals afterwards.  If you don't want to watch it, I'll share a few of the photos below.

And here is Evan on the night before his birthday.  It's our tradition to make a video on the child's birthday eve--I haven't always remembered, but I know I'll appreciate it later!