Matthew's Mario Party

So with very little planning we pulled off a pretty great little party. I had really dragged my heals with this birthday party for many reasons. His birthday was April 24th and the baptism alone did me in.

One of the biggest reasons that I wasn't thrilled about doing a party is that Matthew has been a a real stinker lately and I didn't feel he deserved a party. I told him it really boiled down to how much time I have to do things. If he isn't willing to help by doing his homework, piano, and chores (without digging in his heals), I just literally don't have time to throw him a fantastic party.

I really wanted him to just take a couple of friends to Boondocks like Christopher did for his 8th birthday, but Matthew really wanted a party at home. He had the ideas all worked out (most of which were pretty complicated in the beginning). Probably the only reason I gave in is because he hasn't had a birthday party with friends in 3 years.

He wanted to have a Mario Party (like the video game) and play games in the backyard based on the mini-games on Mario Party 7. It was actually a very clever idea. So I forced myself a week ago to make him some cute Mario Invitations, that was the first step. Once those were out, I knew I was committed and we would make it work somehow.

Then on Thursday night (less than 24 hours before the party) we nailed down some game ideas. Friday, amist a million other things, I grabbed everything I thought might be useful at the dollar store and off we went.

Here is what we did:

I made lanyards for all the kids with a picture of a Mario character and it's name. This is just like Mario Party 7 because you have to choose a character at the beginning of the game. The great thing about Mario is that there some girl characters too.

Once everyone arrived, we started with a game called "Catchy Tune." In the video game, the characters run around grabbing musical notes that fall from the sky. The first person to catch one of each of the different musical notes wins.

So at the dollar store I found some foam stickers in the shape of musical notes and instruments. We had cards on the table showing the kids all the shapes they had to find. I gave each kid a piece of construction paper and told them they had to find each of the shapes and stick them to the paper. Robert and I dropped the shapes a few at a time from above and they all worked furiously to find the notes they needed. The winner for this game got a "note" book. It was a notebook that had musical notes on it (can I just say I love the dollar store!).

Next we went outside. We played a game called "Take Me Ohm." On Mario Party 7 the characters have to jump over electrical currents that come from different directions. (Note: the word "ohm"refers to electrical currents). So for our version, we had a square made out of pvc pipe in which two people stood. Then we had four people holding two jump ropes that went from side to side and the contestants had to jump over the moving jump ropes. Whoever touched the rope first was out.

Another game was "Spider Stomp." In Mario Party 7, the characters race through a course shooting spiders off their webs. We made webs using silly string and hung insects to the webs. The kids used squirt guns to spray the insects off the webs. We did it in teams and the first team to get all the insects off their web won.

"Donkey Kong Barrel Racing" was a take off on several DK games. I covered my 5 gallon storage buckets with brown packaging paper and the kids raced the course jumping over the barrels to see which team could do it the fastest.

For refreshments, we had cupcakes with red icing and marshmallows that were suppose to look like the Mario mushrooms. I used red Kool-Aid instead of food coloring in the white icing. What I didn't account for was that the punch mix would make the icing very sour, oh well. It was probably the first birthday party where the kids ate all of the cupcake and very little icing!

It turned out well and I was exhausted when it was over. Matthew was slightly helpful and did some homework and piano practice this week in anticipation, but of course on Saturday it was right back to pulling teeth to get him to do his work. Oh well, I am glad we did it. I love to be creative and it was good to have this project to bond with Matthew a little.