Spencer's Minecraft Birthday Party - or - Boys Are NOISY

Spencer's big Minecraft birthday party was on Saturday night.  We had been planning this for several weeks, and you could feel the excitement in the house.  Josh asked every 15 minutes - all day long - if it was time for the party.

Finally, it was time for the party!  All of the boys who had received this invite showed up, loudly ready to party!

They were greeted at the door with this sign:

Fortunately, no Creepers tried to get in.

I wasn't quite sure how to decorate for this party. On the one hand, I could have cut out a ton of square paper and made Minecraft mosaics all over the walls.  On the other hand, ain't nobody got time for dat.  So instead I bought a bajillion balloons and Lance and I put those up all over the place.

And how about those Minecraft tables?  Not too shabby. (Thank you, Pinterest!)

 It was very hard for little sisters to stay away from the party favors.

We started the party with a rather loud building game.  Not that the game itself was loud, but the boys playing it sure were!  (Cole kept yelling "I CAN'T HEAR!!!" which totally helped with the noise level.)

The goal was to build the tallest free-standing structure possible

I have a ton of pictures of this activity because the boys were so dang cute and intent on their building.  Plus, they were actually holding still.

The boy in green is Clayton - he's Spencer's good buddy from school.  I really like him.  (Fun fact: Clayton's mom was Spencer's Kindergarten teacher.)

 Good buddy Ethan working on his structure... and sneaking a few marshmallows into his mouth!

Josh and his best friend Justin got to come to the party even though they're a few years younger than the rest of the guests - they were both thrilled!

Logan had the claim to fame of having known Spencer the longest - since they were babies!

Clayton and Wesley.  Wesley lives down the street - what a character!

Tanner is also a good friend from school.  He was quite the engineer and won the contest.

Tess and Cole ate the most marshmallows.

Logan's building was tall, but not structurally sound.  (Sorry, Logan!)

Tanner got to choose from our fabulous selection of prizes:

I may or may not have raided the dollar store and random things from the kitchen and office.  Such as a bag of sour gummy candy we'd had in our pantry for months.  Or the robot flash drives Lance got at a conference. (Those were the most coveted prizes!)

Yes, that is Jell-o.  In my defense the idea was that they could use it to make green slime, which is found in Minecraft.

I was kinda surprised the straws weren't chosen - I thought those were cool!  (I am obviously not the same kind of cool as 10 year old boys.)

Okay, there were also old Burger King kid meal toys, but they were pretty cool toys.

The next game was Enderman Hot Potato.  Don't you love my super-fancy Enderman bean bag?

It was as wild and noisy as you would expect a group of 9-10 year old boys throwing a bean bag around to be.

Next it was time for Minecraft Target Practice.  (Pin the Tail on the Donkey, only with a target and paper arrows.)

The boys LOVED taking turns spinning each other.

Some got a leeetle off target.

I love all the smiles.

Some got even more off target!

Some even turned into ninjas!

LOTS of wrestling and yelling and tumbling and horsing around and general mayhem - in other words, a group of boys.

 At about the point where the game was falling apart, Lance and Cole came back with the pizza.

Those boys could really put away the pizza!  (I can only imagine what it will be like as they get older. We won't be able to afford to feed them dinner!)

Everyone got to drink a Minecraft Potion of Healing.  Oh, you didn't know there were potions in Minecraft.  How sad.  (I didn't know, either.  In fact, there was very little I knew about Minecraft until about a month ago.)

I just think Ethan looks funny here.  Y'know, just kickin' back, eatin' pizza and shootin' the breeze.

After pizza we played a quick game of "Count the Creepers".  I had taped a bunch of Creepers around the room and the boys had to count/guess the correct number.  You'd think it would be an easy game, but you'd think wrong.  As I correctly assumed, these boys were not very observant/careful counters!  Here's my favorite Creeper placement.

Finally it was time for the cake!

Oh, the cake.

As per usual, the cake gave me nothing but heartache and sorrow as I decorated it.  I had figured that a cube cake wouldn't be that hard to create and decorate.  And as per usual I was wrong.  The night before I was having conniptions because the dang thing kept falling apart and just looking AWFUL.  Fortunately, I figured things out and it turned out okay.

See those skewers sticking out of the top?  They were originally hidden in the frosting, but the cake settled overnight and they started to peek out.  Dang it.

Thank goodness Spencer was willing to have a dirt cube cake and not something super hard, like lava or stone!

Here's a video of the birthday song.  It only gives you a slight inkling of the noise level that evening!

Time for presents!  He got a movie gift card and a giant candy bar. (He was more excited than he looks.)

And another Minecraft Diamond sword!!  (I think Josh was more excited than Spencer was.)

A Minecraft zombie action figure. Sweet.

And... something I don't remember.  I dunno.  Something exciting, I'm sure.

Same with this. Something with Skylanders?  Yeah.

More Minecrafter stuff.  I was impressed with the amount of Minecraft things available!

Minecraft Steve!  (He's the main character.)

Seriously, the boy was thrilled.  His friends were very generous!

We had one last activity after everyone had cake and ice cream - the boys had to fill their Minecraft bags with stuff you'd find around Minecraft. (These doubled as their goody bags to take home.  Tricky Maren - I made them do all the work.)

The only healthy option offered in the game.  Well, I guess there's porkchops and stuff like that, but I didn't think that would go over too well.

The party ended with the boys taking turns playing Minecraft on the computer or arcade games on the TV.  Spencer didn't want to share his computer and spent a good 15 minutes pouting in the office. ("It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...")

I got to thinking that night - this will probably be the last "kid" party for Spencer, since we only do friend parties every other year. When he's 12 he probably won't want silly party games or even to have his mom around.  In fact, I suspect he'll just want a big LAN party with his friends, which is easier on me but sad at the same time. *sniffle*sniffle* I don't know if I'm ready for him to grow up quite yet; for now I'll just enjoy the last few years I have with him as a kid.