Are you ready to rumble?

Party...not rumble! And that is what we did yesterday. We celebrated our sons' seventh birthday a week early. He loves sports - football, baseball, soccer so we went with a sports theme.

I haven't decorated a cake in a while but I was happy with the outcome of the helmet cake. He chose the colors. I decorated. I was happy because when he saw it, he said it was "awesome". One hurdle cleared!


We invited five classmates and they arrived around the same time. Our son was so excited! He planned to give them a tour of our house, but not the closets (thankfully, yes, I smiled at that). They they ran around. Six active boys. Will the house ever be the same?

Friday night, using a piece of white poster board, I cut out a field goal. From the leftover pieces, we cut out six footballs. Olivia and Elliott colored them and made the shapes look like footballs. We used these for a game - just like pin the tail on the donkey - but instead the object was to place the football in the field goal to score. The boys loved the game and they played it twice. More running around until I gathered them to play a Football Fever word find. They tried it and after one boy found a word, I said they could play again.

Lunch was served, they laughed at the table and had fun.

The time for presents arrived and they were like little rioters around our son. I could not get good pictures or get them to sit down. One present after another was opened and then they ran around for a while.

The last game, before serving the cake, was a quarterback passing game. I set a box up on a chair in the hallway. Each "quarterback" had three tries to throw the small, soft football into the box. They were so excited about this, that it took a while to calm them down. After determining the throwing order, they settled down. One boy would throw the ball, another boy was stationed behind the chair to return the ball, and after the 3 attempts, the boys rotated. It went very well, and surprisingly, it was quite a challenge.

Cake time! After singing Happy Birthday, they all settled down to eat cake and ice cream. The blue frosting colored their lips and tongues - quite a sight!

The time flew by and one by one, parents arrived to pick up their child. Our son had a great day and really enjoyed having his friends over. What a nice group of boys!

Happy Birthday to our son - we love you!