Jacob's Birthday Party

So Jacob's birthday party was Monday, August 16th.  We invited everyone he knew from church, since he really hadn't met anyone his age otherwise, yet, and invited their siblings to come along too, if they wanted to.  We had a pretty good turnout, especially for how busy people were getting ready for school.  I'm so glad!  This was Jacob's first birthday party ever, and I wanted it to be fun for him.

We went with a "bug" theme that my sister Melissa shared with me recently, and it was great.  We started the day off by doing some mini "ice treasures".  We made them inside the nice little IKEA children's bowls, and it seemed like a perfect size.  Inside each of them was an assortment of plastic bugs and pennies and nickles.  Everything they freed from the ice was put inside a gift bag to take home.  They had fun pouring, squirting, spraying, and chopping the ice for a good 15-20 minutes.  Perfect for a summer birthday!

After ice treasures, we played a little bug-themed game called Spider and Fly.  Everyone paired up, and took turns being the spider or fly.  The "spider" had to try to wrap toilet paper around the "fly" as fast as they could.  First one to finish a roll was the winner!  This was actually very tricky, because too much pressure made the toilet paper squares separate, and that meant it didn't want to wrap around very well.  But they had fun, at least!

We had one friend who had to leave after just an hour, so we went ahead and did snacks and cake/ice cream next.  I had spent a few hours the day before getting some "bug" treats ready:  Spiders made from round crackers, peanut butter, and pieces of pretzel for legs, and raisins for eyes; ants on a log (celery sticks); ladybugs on crackers made with tomatoes and prunes (I wish I would have thought to do black grapes instead, as the kids mostly avoided the prunes); caterpillar grapes with slices of carrot for antennae; and bees on crackers made from circles of cheese and prunes (again, grapes would have been better.  Or maybe olives?).  The spiders were gone in a heartbeat, and caterpillars came next.  We had a lot of leftover ladybugs and bees, lol. 

Here's Jacob and his "dirt" birthday cake!  It's a devil's food cake (boxed, I got lazy) topped with chocolate frosting and crushed Oreos over the frosting.  Then we put extra bugs all around it and stuck the candles in.  :)

And here's a video of the birthday song and blowing out the candles!



After everyone had eaten, we played pin the spider on the spider web.  I wish Jesse had taken a picture of the board near the end!  All the spiders were grouped in the same general area, in the left half of the web, mostly in the upper quadrant.  Melinda actually got closest to the middle.  And even though Jacob looks reeeeally close to center here, he changed it at the last second and got pretty far away.  I was pleased with how eager the kids were to take their turns!

After Pin the Spider on the Spider Web, we headed back down to the grass and played a quick little bug-crawl relay race (otherwise known as a crab crawl).  Jacob was a stinker and wouldn't even give it a try, just laid down and watched everyone else.




And finally, we played "Buzz Buzz Sting"... a bee version of Duck Duck Goose.  Alex was super adorable when he had his turn.  ;)

Time was about over at this point, so we headed inside to let Jacob open his presents.  He loved *everything* that he received, and has had fun leaving them all over the floor for me to trip over this past week.  ;)