Ninjago Birthday Party

Cash's highly anticipated 6th birthday Ninjago bash finally rolled around last week! While I sometimes opt to keep the birthday festivities a surprise for the kids, I think having Cash help out and watch it develop made it even better for him. (And not a complete failure like the huge water balloon fight I launched at his 5th birthday which left him screaming in tears after the first burst of water got him....)  I looked online finding all the perfect elements I wanted and became quite the Ninjago expert myself (these are Lego ninjas for those who don't know). I'll start at the beginning of my pictures as my prep started.

First up: invitations.

Those ninja eyes made for a great theme to base my decorations around. While I liked the look of this first invitation better, I didn't want the girls to think it was totally a boy party and so added in the only girl character on another invitation that I gave out to the girls:

I worked on all my designs and printables first so the next item up was:

Super awesome water bottles. I've never done the custom labels before and I have to say I might be a fan. Especially since this design looked so cool!  I adapted it from a free handout from another awesome Ninjago party I saw here, resized it for the water bottles I had, and added this on the back based on another idea I saw somewhere else.  Even the bar code had meaning.  :)

To further the beverage coolness, I decided to make some "Ninja Boost Activator" for the kids to add to their water.  Individual serving Crystal light packets covered with these labels made out of sticker paper (I use that stuff for everything).  Man did the kids buy into this or what. It's been days and my kids still insist on drinking ninja juice every day as opposed to regular water. 

Next up?  Well....

I made 20 ninja masks.  Now originally I made 16 - four in each of the colors of the Ninjagos - red, white, blue and black. And then thought better of it and made some pink ones for the girls, even though it went against the colors I was trying to stick with. I was glad I did though - I was pretty sad they were all gone at the end of the party!  I hadn't had nearly enough running around my building like this.  :)   And while I have zero sewing skills, it really was just a matter of figuring out how to design and cut it (turned out two pieces looked better than one mask) and then I just hemmed down one side on each piece and sewed on the extra fabric for straps to tie in the back. Voila.

My nephews helped try them on when they were in town.

The swords (the ones pictured on me above) also took a little adjusting. When I bought them here, they were originally pictured with a strap which I was totally excited about. Ninjas have to wear their swords on their back to be ready for attack, of course. But alas, when I got them there was no strap and they said that must have been an old picture (and have since updated it). So I had some more engineering to figure out how to attach straps and sewed straps out of thick ribbon on all of them.  I loved them. And even though I tried to make them so they were quite snug on me, it turns out kids really don't have a thick enough body to hold those on tight and still be big enough to get over their heads. Maybe some type of elastic material would have worked better, besides the fact that over one shoulder thing was way beyond any of them!  And as I was jumping around the hallways of my building  yelling as I drew my sword at people, it occurred to me that the 30" sword may even be too long for their 6 year-old arms to draw out of the sheath...and I was right.  But it was still a great effect.  And they loved them.

Then on to one of my favorite details!  

My Ninjago suckers. I used Tootsie pops and covered them with crepe paper and then stuck on the ninja eyes also printed out on sticker paper. Used some double-sided tape here and there to make them look better. Loved them.

Next project was the take-home goody bags. Only with the Asian ninja flare.

Fortune cookies, martial arts arm bands, a cool looking roll of gum, a wall-walker (there were cool ninja ones but I couldn't find them in stock anywhere), and a couple ninjago stickers I had made out that I didn't really end up using. (There were also cool ninja band-aids I wanted to use but I couldn't find those in stock anywhere either). All packaged up in:

Chinese take-out boxes with ninja eyes.

Then came the food, as Ninjago-themed as I could come up with. 

Spinjitzu sticks. (Spinjitzu is their form of martial arts, they have toys that the ninjas spin around on with their weapons to battle each other.) I figured these could pass as those staffs they battle with.  Pretzel rods dipped in different colored candy melts and then rolled in sprinkles, chocolate chips, and my personal favorite, the blue toasted coconut (they didn't have blue sprinkles at the last store I went to so I got creative).  I also did some in an intermediate size (a bit bigger than the small pretzel sticks) and put them in take-out boxes figuring adults would probably like to sample different kinds without having to commit to the whole rod. Originally I thought I might put the big pretzels in take-out boxes to serve, but they turned out to look disturbingly like french fries sticking out of a box and took away from how pretty they were!  (Maybe it was the fact I tried a red box first and it just looked so much like a McDonald's french fry box....) But the small ones were cute in there.

Of course the Asian theme couldn't do without some "sushi."

Rice krispie treats wrapped around Swedish fish or gummy candies and then wrapped with some fruit rolls.  Huge hit with the kids.

Then there was the veggie tray:

The Ninjagos fight the snakes this year, so we went with a cucumber snake with extra carrot tongues you could even stick in your mouth and try yourself.

And of course Ninjago cupcakes.

While the prep all went well, I was super anxious about the weather. Living in an apartment is a big drag for having birthday parties because there is just no space for everyone. So we were having it out at the park by our house - a huge risk since notoriously, all my birthday parties get rained on. The party was Thursday night from 6-8 (since most of his friend's parents work). The first half of the week was beautiful.  Gorgeous, pleasant evenings that weren't nearly as muggy as Miami can be in the summer. Then I heard the weatherman say, "but the last half of the week will be nothing like the first half."  Oh great.  But by Wednesday night and Thursday morning, it looked to be no threat of showers during party time, just HOT. Sure enough, the day looked beautiful, but the temperature was holding steady at a steamy 95 degrees by 6:30pm.  And then, 20 minutes into the party we heard huge claps of thunder!  We were so caught off guard - none of us had even seen anything coming.  But it thundered and thundered and had us all so anxious that we were going to have to pack everything all up while getting dumped on in a mess of kids, food and all that party setup that we were fairly in panic mode and tried to speed up the party a bit in case we had to run for it.  What do you know, but the first raindrop fell at 7:59pm.  It was pretty miraculous for being surrounded by the constant rumble of thunder for an hour! So thank heavens it turned out well.

While I would have loved more tables, more space to have everything set up, a house where I could have everything set out in different areas so I wasn't trying to remember details all throughout the party, we did the best with what we had and it was a great time.  My other favorite detail had to be these Chinese lanterns.  I found these criss-cross paper lanterns here (along with a lot of my other party favors and decorations), which I thought looked even more like a ninja mask wrapped around their head.  Again, sticker paper for the eyes. They're still hanging in our house and make me so happy.

  

 

I just read that you can put packing tape over your labels if you want them more waterproof. Might have been a good idea with the humidity here. And then ninja boost activated....

I had made some layered jello (lemon in the middle) named after Kai, the ninja of fire, but you can see the humidity turned these into more jello shooters than I had planned on.  :)

I had also skewered some fruit, which I really thought was a big eyesore, but I made the mistake of asking Cash if I could just throw all the stickers I wasn't going to use into the treat boxes for the kids or if he wanted me to make some fruit skewers with them.  He chose fruit.

After some food, we gave the ninja masks out to the kids. 

And I loved the response to "show me your best ninja moves."

 

Then Sensei Wu stepped out for some ninja training.  (Sadly the strap for the cute Sensei Wu beard I made broke right as Ryan put it on so he just wrapped the thing around his face however  he could just to get it to stay).

 Cash said ninja training was his favorite part. He took it very seriously.

Ninja swords were demonstrated and distributed. (Yeah, that takes some coordination even if you're 33.)

Attempted some instructions that ninjas don't hit other ninjas and to stay a good arm's distance away from each other...

And unleashed them on the enemy....

 

 

A couple of bop bags that I had gotten to give them something to unleash their 6 year-old sword-wielding fury on.  (I thought it would have been fun to play the Ninjago theme song while they battled the bop bags but I didn't have anything that would have played it loud enough at the playground.)

And I'm pretty sure some people had to be cursing my name for giving a bunch of 6 year-olds swords on the playground!

Eh, you only turn 6 once.

Um, did someone forget I've been strapped in this stroller this whole time??

Um, yes. Yes, I did.  Thank heavens he wasn't his usual fussy self for a little while so we could run a birthday party.  No matter, he would still prove to be the most unwieldy of all with those ninja swords.

I will say things like this definitely make you wish you lived by family (and them glad you don't). But just for the sheer fact that who watches your kids while you make all the trips back and forth to the park taking all this stuff? Thank heavens for my neighbor Betsey. I would have been a disaster without her!  Too bad I didn't get any pictures with her in it because she was behind my camera the whole time. We will be so devastated when they move away this summer. :(  (And I keep saying I'll need a counselor. Who else will listen to all the unimportant details of my life that my husband has no interest in hearing or give me input as to which shade of red they like better on my ninja labels??)

I know this is a lot of detail for a party, but I sure poured over blogs looking for ideas, and I loved hearing the details!

And just like last year when as soon as Cash turned 5 he lost his bottom teeth, this year wasn't much different!

Happy birthday Cash!! We love you!

I have finally got files up so you don't have to email me, so help yourself to any files you want (I also made an invitation with Lloyd since he wasn't around when we had our party, and a file with more party detail for those interested):

CLICK HERE FOR NINJAGO FILES


**If for some reason this doesn't work, don't leave a comment, just email me directly if you want me to send you anything. jen_isom@hotmail.com . I don't come back and check this post for comments and they don't come to my email. 

Food

A few days before the previous fiasco, I had just looked through the pictures on my cell phone and had to laugh:

Food pictures. Lots of food pictures. Can you tell I love strawberry season in Miami? We try to eat as many as possible. I made a strawberry torte with meringues in various forms - layered like a cake, individual servings made in cupcake tins, and crumbled up with strawberries, whip cream, strawberry sauce and lemon curd (I thought I was making that last one up, but who knew it was a real dessert called an Eton mess). It was the first time I'd made lemon curd however (to find something to do with all the leftover egg yolks after making meringues), but wow, it will definitely not be my last. I could probably drink the stuff. Made for a fabulous trifle. I also made various forms of strawberry sauce (cooked, uncooked, strained of seeds or not). I attempted freezing some to last us past strawberry season but it never made it that far. I also made the best darn fresh strawberry filled cupcakes (think loads of strawberries with some cream and marshmallow fluff) with strawberry icing. They tasted unbelievably like a strawberry milkshake.

Then it was over but along came my other favorite season - mango season. I am so jealous of all my friends who have mango trees right in their yard here! Too bad wherever we move isn't looking likely to be a mango-growing kind of climate. I would love one of those in my yard. We've eaten lots of fresh mangos, mango and black bean quinoa salad, and a lot of mango and black bean salsa - sometimes with roasted corn or tomatoes, or with avocados (another favorite Miami seasonal food). The abundance of these will be on the top of my (ahem, brief) list of things I will miss about Miami.

You'll also see I made a few variations on a moose munch caramel popcorn recipe - with milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, you name it.

I realize this may be lame to listen to someone drooling over food, but well, eating probably comes in a close second to my family of things I love in this life. And maybe someday I'll look back and be inspired to make some of them again. Besides, what else am I going to do with all those pictures?

Worst Mother's Day ever

Guess what my kids gave me for Mother's Day?

Lice.


That's right.  In what was, I hope, the worst Mother's Day weekend of my life, we discovered that yes, we had five cases of lice in the house.  I'm sure your skin is crawling just reading that, so if you must you can stop here.

Let me back up a few months. One weekend we went out of town and came home to an ant infestation in the house.  Like thousands of them. I was so grossed out. Having been through this before years ago, I immediately called pest control because I wasn't going to live my life like that again. I hate having all that pest control junk in my house though - it made my mom sick from the smell and makes me so paranoid that my kids are crawling around on these floors that have pesticides all over them. Hate it, hate it and live in fear that I've now poisoned my whole family.

Not even a couple of weeks later, we found weevils in our cupboard.  That was infuriating. The ants were annoying and creeped me out, but they weren't in my food.  I had to go through everything in my entire house piece by piece and threw out a TON of food.  That was where being a food hoarder in the name of food storage came back to bite me.  It was painful throwing so much food away.  The rest of my food was left all over my counters and scattered throughout my bedroom because I was not putting food back in until those things were gone. But even with all the food out of my cupboards those dang weevils still kept coming out of the cracks in the cupboards for over a month. Maybe they were coming from another apartment? Who knows, but that's a long time to live with no counter space and especially for someone who goes crazy in a messy house. I literally had a constant stress level for a month just seeing all that stuff not in a proper place. Not to mention the nightmares. For weeks.  If I know you, you were probably in my dream at some point finding weevils in my house, pointing out all the places all over my house they were starting to come out of.  Oh, it was an awful month of sleep. Those things are creepy. I even got the pest control guy back and he sprayed all over the cupboards.  I spent hours later washing all that stuff off every surface of my cupboards so I could feel safe having our food in there again. Such a pain.

Finally, finally, finally, they went away.  I went to Home Depot and told the guy that I wanted something to seal off the cracks in my cupboards so nothing came through the cracks and into my cupboards anymore. He gave me something and I went home and spent a tedious evening filling all the cracks with it. Then read the back of the label and saw that it had a huge warning label that stuff in it was known to cause cancer and reproductive harm.  Are you kidding me???  And I just slathered that all over the cupboards that are housing all the stuff that's going to go into my babies mouths?  And then it said you needed some something-approved mask to sand it down so you didn't inhale it. Well, I didn't have that kind of mask, I still sanded it, and that stuff was all over my cupboards. Here I go poisoning my whole family again.  I finally decided to go through and put something else over it to seal it off so at least it wasn't exposed. Oh the hours of my life I'd spent combating bugs.

At last I could get my food off the counters and back in the cupboards and thought my months of tedious, time-consuming bug ridding strategies were over.

And then the roaches came.

I have never in 4 years seen cockroaches in our apartment, but they came.  And they came, and they kept coming.  They would creep you out when you got up in the dark in the middle of the night. They would crawl all over the toilet making you live in fear of ever going to the bathroom again, let alone in the dark.  It seemed to coincide with some work they were doing on our building, so maybe they were displaced, but oh my.  I finally got pest control again.  I couldn't live like that. Between the ants, weevils and roaches, I had pest control here 4 times in 2 months.  Oh the pesticides.  At least I insisted on no more sprays.

SO. I finally had gone THREE days without the roach problem!  The Friday night before Mother's Day I had the young women from our ward sleep over.  I have never done that. I've never even had them to my house before, let alone have a sleepover, nor have I probably had a sleepover in my adult life.  But this happened to be the night I did it.  Ryan took the boys camping.  And then called me in the morning:  "Cash has lice."  Oh no!!  And I have all these girls sleeping all over my house?  On the boys beds?  Heads on the couches??  And my kid has lice??!  Ryan said he was coming home right then, but I tell him I want to get all these girls out before he comes home so we're not exposing them all to it any more than they already have been.

As soon as he gets home I take Cash straight out to the balcony for as short of a haircut as I can stand. I asked Ryan if he had checked the twins and he hadn't. But as I'm out there cutting hair he looks at me and nods.  Oh goodness. As soon as we can all the boys, including poor little lice baby, have a lice treatment on them.  Later that night we tried another one. Ryan and I even did one for good measure. The next day we got a prescription one for all the boys - according to the CDC the only one that actually kills the eggs too, not just the bugs.  But of course now I'm freaked out again - more pesticides. This time on everyone's heads?  We are all surely going to die of something someday from all this.  But trying to get this out of four kids I wasn't messing around. At least three treatments later I was feeling pretty good about them.  Although I'd spent all Mother's Day combing and picking through hair, washing, cleaning....we were exhausted.  As soon as we had finally gotten everything taken care of and the boys in bed I finally had time to stop and think.  And realize...I'm itchy.


Sure enough, Ryan checked and I was positive.

OH. GROSS. ME. OUT.

Seriously?? My one good feature?  And now it was going to probably get thrashed dumping all these pesticides on it?  So out I was at Walgreen's at 1am getting the prescription stuff for my hair.  Which took 3 bottles. And we later realized was draining $200 a bottle out of our FSA and we'd now used five bottles of it.  The next night Ryan stayed up until 4am picking junk out of my hair after I'd had time to do that treatment.

We often get complimented on having a family with great hair. Until you have lice. Then it comes back to bite you  with a vengance being a family with so much hair!  I had contemplated buzzing Cash's hair and just getting it over with, but when the twins had it, I said there was no way I was cutting their hair. Then the baby, then me.  Nope, buzzing was not going to happen. I wasn't going to let those dang bugs make me mad for the next 6 months having to look at bad hair to top it all off.

I can honestly say we're not sure we've ever been so miserable. Between the washing, and the boiling and the vacuuming, the hair treatments, taking out and cleaning all the car seats, and the couches, and washing every item of clothing in their drawers, bleaching down the house, washing everything anyone came in contact with, hour after hour picking through 5 heads of hair to make sure not one egg was left, combing and combing through with the nit comb...I thought we were going to die. We were seriously up until 2am, 4am, 1am every night.  I'm sure we were super overly cautious, but I was pretty impressed with how fast we got rid of five cases of lice. That stuff can linger for a long time.

Now the twins on the other hand - I don't think they had a clue anything was wrong. Not even one complaint of itching, not a word as we yanked through their hair with a comb - all they knew was they got to play an awful lot of video games for a week so they would sit still while we picked through their hair! And so they wouldn't leave their designated square of hardwood floor so they would stay out of the bedrooms and off the couches.  :)

I have to give it to Ryan though - he was vigilant. He's the kind of guy that is happy to leave the dishes until tomorrow, not one given to thorough cleaning, one that won't miss sleep for anything - he just kept going and going. I'm sure it was all in the name of self-defense and self-preservation, but seriously, the guy picked through my mounds and mounds of hair night after night after night.  Granted, I lost about a quarter of my hair in the process and I'm going to have a lovely halo of broken hair all over my head, but he did get it out.

Seriously though, I am so dying. Every time I am so grossed out, skin crawling, hair standing on end, weeks of nightmares - I think it can't get any worse, any more skeevy, and then it does. Ants, weevils, roaches, and then lice.  I really think someone knows my weakness and is throwing this at me deliberately!  And I swear we are like the worst parents ever! Cash had been telling us his head was itchy and I'd looked through his hair multiple times - I think I really just had no idea what I was looking for. How would I know??! I've never seen this stuff before!

And I love that they send home a lice notice when someone in the class has it.  Cash is absent for two days and then shows back up like this:

Subtle. Real subtle.

Oh Miami, just another strike against you.  What pest doesn't thrive here?

Ok, ok. Maybe I am supposed to find the good out of all of this. Well, like I always say: the family that picks together sticks together.

And hey, at least I made you all glad you're not me.  :)

Over it

I feel like the teenage years were about finding myself.

20s were about becoming myself. You know, really developing those characteristics that would come to define me.

Well, I feel like in my 30s I'm just over myself. 

I remember seeing those moms in this age frame - they didn't socialize with the younger moms as much, they were always off doing their own thing, and well, just seemed preoccupied.  

Oh, they were. And guess what, they didn't feel bad about it or left out like I always thought they did. They were just on to other things that had taken more importance in their lives.

Yep. I've hit that age where I'm just over feeling like I have to be at every social event so I can keep up with everyone and not feel left out. I'm over worrying if I look a certain way, or what other people will think of me, and I'm just preoccupied with naps and school pick-ups, feeding little bodies, taking care of church responsibilities, and trying to squeeze in some time with the hubby once in a while. I'm over feeling like I need to deprive myself and hone a perfect body so I look good - because really, who would notice or care?  I'm definitely over being embarrassed to go out in public straight out of bed, :)  and I'm definitely over thinking I have it all together like I probably thought in my 20s!  Seriously, how hard is it to get your own little self out of bed and ready in the morning and just walk out the door?! HA! 

I talked to a friend recently that I knew from our time in New York - I was really almost embarrassed, like practically ducking my head and feeling like I needed to apologize to her that she knew me in my 20s.  I'm sure I totally thought I was so put together! How much I have changed since then!  I felt like I had to explain that to her ... yeah, I'm really a different person than I was 5 years ago when we left New York.... She laughed a knowing laugh too, reading my thoughts exactly. "Yeah, I remember when we would come to your house and you'd be all concerned when the girls would be playing near your coffee table that was really nice!"  Oh brother.  Um yeah, that thing left our house long ago and we have nothing but junk and hand-me-downs in our house full of boys. (Granted, I really did love that coffee table.) But it really hit it home to me how much things have changed, and how much I have changed in just a few short years. And it was a silly, yet perfect example of just how differently I value things now and what matters and what doesn't.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I know you have to still do things for yourself at this age, exercise, feel good about yourself, get out of the house once in a while, do something other than mothering so you don't feel like you lose your identity; it's just that you don't care about shopping for a fabulous outfit as much as you care about whether or not your baby is getting enough iron or your kids are able to get outside and run around. And it seems this is the age when everyone I know on facebook is training for marathons or getting into some new craze - so it must be that you do need to re-invent yourself to some degree or at least hold on to something to give you some description as an individual. Maybe that's what blogging was for me, but heck, I'm kind of even over that now too.  Who has the time to be witty and funny and learn all that cutsey blog lingo like I heart everything and (read: whatever it is I'm really implying)!??!

So yep, I'm good where I am. I'm happy worrying about things that definitely feel more important to me than the things I used to worry about. I like the wisdom. I like the status. I like being in the position of all the women I looked to for advice and example when I was a newlywed and a new mom, (although I certainly don't feel as successful at it as they were). I like the stride we've hit in our married life - where my husband doesn't realize why things are the way they are in our marriage, but I've deliberately done them because I know it avoids conflicts and keeps sanity. (It only recently occurred to him - why do I always give the kids a bath??  Because I have learned after all these years that if you clean up dinner and the kitchen, I will be angry at what a lame job you did and mad that I have to go re-do and finish everything you didn't do; whereas, I don't care how you give the kids a bath and get them in bed as long as it gets done. See?  Problem averted! Wife is a genius.)

Life is good.

Anyhow, anyone know what's in store in the 40s? Cause right now I just see it as a sort of dismal decade when you contemplate trying to return all those body parts back to where they used to be.  :)

Easter

Here are pretty much the best pictures we got at Easter and Diesel's first time at a splash pad.

 

Seriously, check that out ladies.

My friend made this cute marshmallow garden.