I love throwing themed parties. My kids have parties on their even years and I start planning far in advance. But Hunter turned 10 and thanks to our little remodel – I didn’t have it in me to spend the time throwing a themed party. (which if I’m being honest was a little difficult to let go of!) I explained the situation to Hunter and he was more than understanding. We decided he would invite a couple friends to a trampoline/ninja warrior place and grab some dinner.
A few days later, he came to me and said he wanted to invite a lot more people. He’s a friend to everyone and he wanted everyone to come. So, we changed plans and had a swim party instead and it ended up being a huge success. They played king of the floaty for over an hour. They were exhausted by the time they were done and it was fun watching a pool full of kids screaming and laughing.
The kids could’ve stayed in the pool for the whole party but they were turning into prunes so we had cake and played Hunter’s favorite game – the candy bar game.
For those unfamiliar with the game, you purchase different candies for every person in your group (and we had a large group so it was tricky finding that many different candies when I was trying to avoid chocolate that I knew would melt). You put all the candies in the center and set a time limit – we did 10 minutes. The kids take turns rolling two dice. They roll once and if they get a 7 or 11 or doubles they can take a candy from the center (and hide it behind them) and pass the dice along. If they roll something other than that they just pass the dice along. The dice go round and round the circle, everyone taking their turn to roll the dice. You try and keep track of the candies you like so if you roll a 7, 11 or doubles you can ask someone specifically for their candy. But you have to be able to remember who has what candy in order to steal it from them. Candy gets passed around over and over again. You win some, you lose some. You do this for your specified time limit. We like to make sure everyone walks away with something so after the game is complete, the kids who had more than one candy, kept their favorite and returned the other ones to the center of the circle. Those who didn’t end up with a candy got to choose one from the center.
From the amount of laughing and squealing I can assume everyone had a great time – regardless that there was no “theme” or even balloons!
