Jungle Mini-Golf 5th Birthday Party

When Mikie told me that he wanted another mini-golf birthday party this year, I can honestly say that I wasn't surprised. The child lives and breathes (and just recently dreams) mini-golf. I was also not surprised by his choice of a jungle theme. Two of his favorite animals are jaguars and elephants. I used that as an inspiration for the invitations which I sent all folded up with writing on both sides of the golf ball:

Let out a roar, get ready to score, at Mikie's 5th birthday, jungle/safari mini-golf par-tee.

It took us almost 11 hours to set up this year. We decorated from 11 am until 10 pm and then went home and decorated the cakes until 2:00 in the morning. Even though that seems late, it was still 2 hours earlier than last year's 4:00am finish time.

Mikie sees his golf course for the first time:

Welcome to the jungle:

Monkeys hung from the lights:

Butterflies flew in circles attached to the ceiling fans

Grab a ball, club, scorecard and personalized pencil:

I made the scorecards with my cricut:

Practice hole:

Hole #1 JAGUAR:

The jaguar tail spiraled around as an obstacle:

Zachary shows you how it's done:

Tate may start to enjoy this sport after all:Hole #2 GIRAFFE

Felt mats at each tee area to match the theme:

Hole #3 ELEPHANTS

Super Boagie (my mom) turned our card table into an elephant:

Mikie said that was his favorite hole.

Hole #4 ZEBRA

This hole had two log tunnels:

A frog popped out of the hole this year:

Hole #5 SNAKES

Mikie wanted the last hole to "eat the balls" so we turned a dryer vent hose and funnel into a hungry snake.

The hallway was lined with jungle print paper and lit by black lights again. This year rain forest sounds played on the hidden sound machine.

There were 4 different crafts for the kids to make, but my boys weren't interested in any of them. They played mini-golf from the moment they walked in the door until the time we had to tear it all down. Here are the crafts the other kids enjoyed:

Footprint Bookmarks: I found the cutest elephant and gorilla rubber figurines that had stamps for feet.

These cute animal stand-ups were made by punching out and assembling a giraffe, a lion, an elephant, and a jaguar (cheetah actually).

There were jungle picture frames to color.

Wiggly wooden snakes were fun to paint and then watch glow under the blacklights in hole five.

Michael's niece Caitlin used face paint to turn the kids into jungle animals.

Lenny puts the animals on the rainforest flannel board.

Games:

Dig through the grass & golf balls in the bucket to find one animal that was represented from each hole.

Pin the ball in the hole. Choice of 4 different holes with matching ball: Zebra, Tiger, Jaguar, Giraffe.

The blindfold was an elephant mask with the eye holes covered.

Feed the Hungry Elephant: Toss peanuts into the elephant bag.

Pass the camera (like hot potato) and look inside to see a jungle animal. Find the jungle animal around the room and then go rescue a stuffed animal from under a net.

The prizes & crafts: Widlife bags, stuffed animal, trumpeting elephant, elephant blow-out, stickers, 5 plastic animals, slap bracelet, animal punching baloon.

I found animal skin print material that matched each of the themes of the 5 holes so I used them as tablecloths.

The golf ball lollipops were such a huge hit last year, I had to do them again. This year, I added a bag of peanuts as the elephant food.

The golf ball chocolates made another appearance this year.

Right before I moved from Whidbey Island 3 years ago, I suggested to my very dear friend, Amber, that we should visit each other every January and May for our boys' birthdays. She agreed to the idea and has made it to every birthday party since. Thanks so much, Amber! We are all blessed by your friendship and Mikie is so grateful to get to celebrate with his favorite friend.

Did I mention she flew out here this time with two kids AND she was 6 months pregnant? Yes, she is an AWESOME friend!

The Food:

Among all the other major and minor details of the party that couldn't be completed with my fabulous mother, the food has/is/always will be (please?) her specialty. I didn't get a chance to set out any of the food before the guests started arriving, and by the time I made my way over there, Super Boagie had it all laid out. Of course, I like sticking with the theme:

The Prey: bone-in ham

Snake Dogs

Gorilla Pops: Chocolate Covered Bananas

Jaguar Tails: Breadsticks with Olives

Jungle Hummus Dip with butterfly crackers and celery trees and broccoli bushes.

Snake Eggs: hard boiled eggs

Python Pasta Salad with snake shaped noodles.

Pepper Butterflies

Animal crakers in Safari Hats

Cheese Animals with Pretzle Trees

I had a lot of fun thinking of all the food to represent the theme, but most of those ideas came from the internet. The one thing I am going to claim bragging rights to is my cake idea.

(Super Boagie made the jungle print tablecloth)

It's not so much the outside of my cake that is originial, but the insides. Let me explain: Mikie wanted 5 cakes because he's five (I'm telling people it was his idea, but I think you know who the real crazy person is). I wanted each cake to be decorated like the animal at each hole and found edible images that just happen to be sold in the exact three degsigns I needed (jaguar, giraffe, and zebra). For the elephant, I used gray frosting and gave it texture with a paper towel. For the snake, I made grass and snakes from hard icing.

The tree was made from rice krispies, peanut butter, corn syrup, and chocolate candy melts.

The golf balls are candles.

The rocks around the green are edible and the hole is an olive.

Mikie's cake was so enormous, that it hid him when he sat down.

As I was designing this cake in my mind, I suddenly had the urge to make the INSIDE of each cake match the theme of the animal on the outside. So, my elephant cake was a peanut butter cake (becuase elephants eat peanuts):

The Zebra cake was striped with black and white layers:

The Jaguar Cake was butter pecan with spots of chocolate chips and butterscotch chips:

The Giraffe Cake was a chocolate and yellow checkerboard:

And Mikie wanted a pink cake so the snake cake was pink:

This party, like all my other parties, wouldn't have been nearly as fun, nearly as fancy, run nearly as smoothly, or have nearly as much detail without all the help from my mom. She's not only Mikie's Super Boagie, but she's my SuperMOM too! I love you, Mom! THANK YOU!!!!!

Mikie, we love you so much and hope you had a jungle-riffic fifth birthday party!

If you'd like to see all these pictures set to music, you can watch them on my photoshow website (look at my favorite sites in the right margin)

Field Trip #15 Monastery

When I tell you the name of the Magic Tree House book Mikie finished reading right before his birthday, you're going to wonder why we visited a Monastery. In book #15: Viking Ships at Sunrise, the main characters travel back to ancient Ireland and help save a Monastery from an attack by Vikings.

Again, living in this area it wasn't hard to find the perfect field trip. My mom was flying in to help us celebrate Mikie's upcoming birthday; so, on the day that she arrived we took advantage of the nice weather and extra set of hands and rode the metro to the Franciscan Monastery . After walking around the gardens, which would be so pretty in the spring, we took an hour long tour of the Monastery where I witnessed with my own ears a miracle of God: BOTH OF MY BOYS WERE QUIET AND WELL BEHAVED FOR AN ENTIRE HOUR!

Zachary stayed awake in the airport, while eating lunch, on the metro, and on the 15 minute walk to the Monastery, but fell asleep 1 minute before we walked through the gates. He slept for 30 minutes before the tour started and woke up as soon as the guide began speaking. Beautiful picture of the hand of God.

Mikie shows a picture of a monk in his book.

I was really hoping to be able to talk with one of the monks, but all we were able to do was catch a glimpse of one as he walked into another room.

We were able to see an example of their clothing.
Inside the Monastery:

Mikie wanted to know which one of the thieves asked Jesus for forgiveness and would spend eternity in paradise with him. Can you tell which one?

Answer: The one on the right that has light behind him.

Another great field trip that Boagie was able to be a part of!

Mikie's Birthday Day

Mikie's actual birthday was 2 days before his big party. Here's what we did: He woke up and opened presents. Here's a video of one of his favorite gifts:

For breakfast, he had a Cinnabon pecanbon roll that we got at the airport when we picked up Boagie.

Then I went to MOPS for 2 hours and Boagie took the boys to Chuck E Cheese.

After lunch with the mouse, we drove to the airport to pick up our friends who flew all the way from Washington State.

Tate was a little overwhelmed and hid behind Miss Amber and Ayden.

Then we ate at the California Pizza Kitchen while waiting for Michael to arrive.

For dessert, Mikie got strawberry cheesecake.

And the Wymans split a sundae.

Some people might feel a little sad when their child reaches the age that requires an entire handful of fingers be held up when he/she is asked "How old are you?" But I, well... I'm so excited that he is 5 years old!!!!!! He's finally reached my favorite age. True, he no longer asks to be held unless his legs are too tired from walking...and, he doesn't want to sit on your lap unless there aren't any seats left....and, you can no longer use the secret spelling code when talking with another grown up....but, he still lets you kiss him in public and hold his hand just because...he still needs to be comforted when he gets hurt and have me tell him when the sad parts of the movie are over....he still asks permission to eat candy that someone has handed him and more often than not remembers his 'please' and 'thank-yous.' He has an amazing gift from God that allows him to manipulate numbers, read chapter books and pronounce words that I can't even spell (like enthusiastically), remember numerous facts on a wide variety of topics (although Dinosaur trivia interests him the most), and can get a hole in one almost every time we go to a mini-golf course. Yes, I am very glad he's finally five!

90th Birthday Celebration

Michael's grandmother turned 90 years old in January, so her family threw a surprise party for her. Michael's sister, Terry, coordinated most of this party. I made the invitations:

Grandma Seger with the two boys.

My Mother-In-Law & Sisters-In-Law

Nancy, Terry, Tammy

I've always thought it was neat how my name fits right in with my two sister-in-laws. We all start with a "T" end with a "Y" and have 5 letters in our name.

The Jones Family

The Doziers

The Pattisons

Field Trip #14 CHINA

I'm all caught up with my posts! YAY! I felt so far behind when I was posting Halloween picts at Thanksgiving and had the busiest time of year yet to come. But I'm finally current in all my postings and just in time for Mikie's big birthday celebration coming up next weekend.

I have my sister-in-law, Tammy, to thank for this field trip. When she heard that Mikie was reading the Magic Tree House book Day of the Dragon King about ancient China, she suggested we go see the Terra Cotta soldiers at the National Geographic Museum. I didn't even know there was a National Geographic Museum, but it is now one of my bookmarked sites! While this field trip wasn't exactly as exciting as the Medieval Times or as unexpected as finding the Ghost Town, this one was SOOOO relevant to the book!

We met Michael in D.C. after work and rode the metro to the museum. We arrived right at 3:00 and were able to get tickets to enter right away. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the actual exhibits but they did have banners and a replicated soldier that we could take pictures with.


As we were taking this picture of the banner, one of the museum workers (Ronnie Mae) noticed Mikie's book and started talking to him. She was telling us numerous facts about the soldiers and asking Mikie questions as well. She was growing increasingly intrigued with Mikie's knowledge and was equally impressed with his mathematical skills. I know God has gifted my child with a talent for manipulating numbers easily in his head, but even I was dumbfounded when she asked him "There are 7,000 soldiers and it took 700,000 people to make those soldiers. How many worked on each one?" Without missing a beat he responded "100." It took me another 30 seconds to do the mental math and realize that he was in fact correct. Ronnie Mae stood there with her mouth open and said "He's a human calculator." To which I replied, "That is his favorite toy! He plays with a calculator every day."

Mikie & Ronnie Mae

This is the one 'replica' soldier that we were allowed to take a picture of. Within the exhibit we saw many more soldiers, the chariots and horses, a painting of the Dragon King, a model of his palace, a painting of the Great Wall being built, and a diorama of the sculpting process. It didn't take long for Mikie to realize that there were numbers throughout the exhibits that marked the points on the audio tour (which we chose not to participate in) and he was a little distracted with trying to find every number.

The picture in his book shows the soldiers lined up in the tomb.

After the museum, we hopped back on the metro and visited China Town.

In our book, we learned that the rooftops in ancient China were curved, or sloped, because they were protecting themselves from evil spirits that could supposedly only travel in straight lines.

We dined on Chinese food and enjoyed our fortune cookies.

Instead of going straight home, we took a detour and drove through the Bull Run Festival of Lights. Even though there was no Christmas music playing on the radio, it was very nice not to have any lines and we could drive even more slowly than normal stopping at the displays that interested us the most. I think we'll wait until after the new year to go again next time.