Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs...

Evan had his first "friend" birthday party last Friday ~ I say "first" because it was actually his first party separate from our usual family celebration. He was allowed to invite 5 friends, so he picked two from school, two from church, and one family friend. When it was time to decide on a theme, we wavered between a camp-out party and a dinosaur party. Personally, I was rooting for the camp-out party, but the dinosaurs won that battle.

It all started with this little egg invitation...

When the boys arrived, they were all given their own adventure hat labeled with their name. They colored in pictures of dinosaurs while we waited for all the guests to arrive.

They cut them out and put them on our dinosaur mural.


Once everyone was there, we played some games.



Started with "Pin the Horn on the Triceratops..."


Continued with Musical Dinosaur Footprints....



And we really kicked it up a notch with "Hot Potato" ~ except we passed a dinosaur.

Time for a change of scenery, so outside we went. Thank goodness we didn't the rain that they were calling for [is it possible that there is any other job in this world where you can be wrong SO often and still have a job???? I digress...]

I had hidden parts of a dinosaur fossil all over the yard and the boys had to follow the clues like a scavenger hunt to find the individual pieces.



Then they had to work together to put the puzzle together...




Here's the completed skeleton. I have absolutely no idea what kind of dinosaur it was ~ found it on the internet ~ but one of Evan's buddies, Bryan, is a dinosaur connoisseur ~ he knew its name after only seeing the first three pieces.

You'd think I'd remember what he called it ~ but, I don't...



After a dinner of dinosaur chicken nuggets, we had our dinosaur dig in the sandbox. I don't have any photos of that because it was complete chaos :) I had hidden some clean, dry chicken bones in the sand and I also found these really cool plastic dinosaur skeletons from Oriental Trading Company that were just perfect. The boys thought they were really cool. Here's a photo from their website so you can get an idea of what they looked like.


Finally, it was time for dinosaur cake.
I even made an ice cream volcano by pouring strawberry syrup
over melting chocolate ice cream.



Followed by gift opening and a dinosaur egg hunt outside....

I think a good time was had by all.
[Dare I say it was "DYNO-mite!" HAHAHAHA ~ yeah, I know, pretty corny]
The kids took home these cute dinosaur mugs filled with dinosaur goodies ~ also from OTC. Should have gotten a photo of them, too ~ especially since they were ready a few days ahead of time, but I didn't think of it :)

Now, we're working on the thank you notes.
Evan is diligently writing each one out himself with a little help from mommy now and then.
Even though this was quite a bit more work than having a party at moonbounce [what we did for his 5th birthday], it was about 1/2 the price and we [I] had fun planning all the activities.
What do you want from an elementary teacher? :)