For his seventh birthday party, Holden wanted to re-do his fifth birthday party. Instead of Robots-Lego-StarWars-electric with bikes, he wanted an underwater theme. Otherwise, same park, same activity: Obstacle course!
I must give all credit to Alec and his parents for dreaming up and executing on the obstacle course.
Our obstacles. These three hilarious first graders decided to do the whole course with boxes on their domes.
- Put a box on your head and walk around the tree.
- Walk across the balance beam (above) made from bricks and wood in our back yard.
- Limbo under a broomstick held by the grandparents.
- Dribble a soccer ball through the cones (I knew those cones would come in handy!) and take a shot on goal. We had to add a few defenders to make this challenging enough.
Money saving trick. Rather than do a full meal, we held the party between meals and offered only cake, fruit, and juice. I don’t know if our plan was entirely successful. While we did save on food, a handful of kids asked where the pizza was and my husband almost ordered some out of guilt. Plus we forgot to serve the juice and fruit. Oops.
The cake was a huge hit. I picked up this quarter sheet cake from Whole Foods for $25 including the design. Everyone loved the marzipan creatures swimming through blue buttercream frosting. Parents loved that it tasted so good. Kids enjoyed dissecting and discussing the dismembered swimmers – Eww. Underwater theme, done.
What will people remember? Utter chaos, boxes on heads, the pinata that was smashed and made kids cry, the cold weather that descended on us at the end of the day, and a general good time.
[Note to self: the number 7 is structurally very weak as a pinata]
What will I remember? Wearing a baby on my chest the whole time, sneaking in behind my boys to get a picture, the smiles, trying to disavow myself of the contents of the pinata.
Have you created any fun obstacle courses for your kids? Sniff, here’s a flashback at his first-ever baby obstacle course.
I love this idea for a birthday party! (In general, I think kids parties are way more complex than they ought to be.) I often create makeshift obstacle courses in my backyard, as a way to entertain the kids while I take a load off. I take 5 minutes to set up some jump ropes, a hula hoop, our soccer net, an old plastic slide from when they were toddlers, etc, and we’re good to go. Often, I time them (or pretend to), to increase the competitive spirit. It’s a great playdate activity, too!
Very interesting course indeed! I never seen such course before but I really enjoyed experiencing birthday party obstacle course pretty much. Wonderful snaps and that birthday cake look amazing. Thanks for sharing.
Love this! We are actually thinking about doing an obstacle course for my daughter’s 5th birthday party this June. We used to make obstacle courses for our toddler program in Kauai. We always used a balance beam, play tunnel, had them crawl under tables, hop through hula hoops, jump over yoga blocks. I like the idea of including cardboard boxes in the course. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
@Jadah, I’d love to hear how it turns out.
The photos of the box-heads just cracks me up.