Tyson's Birthday Extravaganza

*Please excuse the spacing issues in this post. Blogger hates me.

Why is Tyson's birthday such an event each year? I promise, one of these years he is going to have a birthday that only lasts one day.

Most of Tyson's actual birthday was spent traveling with family for a memorial service. I tried to make it special for him by letting him choose what we had for dinner (pizza), letting him rent a redbox, and letting him pick out his own birthday present. I have been planning for the last six months to buy him a new bike for his birthday. But when we got to the store to pick one out we realized his isn't quite tall enough yet! To his great delight I let him wander the toy store and choose his own gift. He chose a Transformer.

The next night we had cake and ice cream at Grandma's house.

(A cake covered in snakes and bugs. He loved it.)
After last years birthday party I swore I would never throw him a huge friend party ever again. This year I am eating my words. Our original plan was to invite one or two friends to go the movies or Trafalga, somewhere fun like that. Then Dan did a business deal with a new fun center, Monkey Island. Part of the deal included a birthday party. How could we pass that up? Tyson was able to invite a boat load of friends to Monkey Island for his birthday. Easy right?

The week of the party I decided to be a good mom, and turn this generic Monkey Island birthday party into a Wild Kratts themed birthday party. I designed Creature Power Discs for all the kids. At the beginning of the party they were all given "Monkey Power." They spent an hour running, jumping, climbing, and sliding like monkeys.

Then we had pizza and Tyson opened his gifts.

(Korina, Tess, Caleb & Payton)

(Tyson, Rhys, Brian, Landon, Zane)

(Vika, Conner, Justin, Kooper, Preston)

(Brianna, Emmy, Porter, Sasha)

After dinner I gave the kids a cup cake with an additional creature power disk on top.

When they were done eating they ran and played until their parents came to pick them up.

It was still insane, crazy chaos, but at least it wasn't at my house and I didn't have to prepare games and activities.