A Birthday Fit For A Jedi Master

**Disclaimer: This is a super long post with a ton of pictures!**

A year ago today, we were at Disneyland to celebrate Nick's 5th birthday(remember the birthday deal?). It was such an awesome day and Nick had an amazing time, especially since he totally got to get trained as a Jedi at the Jedi Training Academy. He even fought Darth Vader. What a great birthday that was for him.So this was his year for a birthday party and he has been planning it since the second he stepped off of the Jedi Training stage a year ago. Since he's an all-knowing and fully-trained Jedi padawan now, he had to share his knowledge with all of his friends, right? So, for the last year, he's been talking about this big party he had in mind where all of his friends would be trained just like he was. Big party, indeed. He invited so many friends that it was a little crazy! That kid has a lot of friends!! Of course, Ben, had to design the invites. I think they turned out great!!
As many might know, Ben and I are giant Star Wars nerds. Okay, so not super duper go-to-conventions-dressed-up kind, but we do have a lot of SW stuff and well, knowledge. Planning this party was so much fun and really easy!! Since we knew what kind of party Nick wanted a year ago, we've also had plenty of time to get ready. Of course, making sure our plan of this party and Nick's plan coincided took some time. Somehow that crazy kid got it in his mind that we were going to get an X-wing somewhere. Okay, kid, we're not that good!
When the day of the party came, Nick was so excited! He totally got into Jedi mode and every picture I took of him he was posed! What a funny kid!We decided to have the party at the church since a ton of kids would be coming. Good thing because there were many!!One thing we did get right was to fulfill Nick's total excitement for an obstacle course. My kids love obstacle courses! They make them all of the time and Nick was insistent that we have one as part of the Jedi training. So, we threw one together and after all the kids got to the party, this was the first thing we did. Thank goodness for our new freezer because we were able to use the box for the cave in Empire. The kids all loved it! They just kept going through the obstacle course over and over and over.
Then we moved onto lightsaber training. We had made lightsabers out of pool noodles and duct tape and every kid got one. This was madness! Jedi Master Ben did such a good job trying to keep those kids from whopping each other, but of course they still smashed each other like crazy. At least they were soft so no real damage was done. Ben taught them a few moves and then we threw balloons out and they had to use their skills to keep them up in the air.

After that, the kids had to search for Princess Leia in the balloons by popping them. Most of them had stormtroopers in them, but they were a few Leias. I think the kids loved this because it's always fun to get to pop balloons. It did get pretty loud though!!


Then, as I got the cake and ice cream ready, the kids did some Carbonite freeze dancing. I didn't get to see much but I heard it was pretty darn funny.
Okay, so now's where I have to be a little proud of myself. I made the coolest cake I have ever made. I am not a very good cake designer but I just can't bring myself to pay a bunch of money for a cake so I do my best attempt to make my kids a homemade cake. I usually fail miserably but they always think it's really cool so that's all that counts. Well, this time, I thought it was pretty cool. After a failed attempt at creating a Death star cake out of two pyrex bowls that caved in, I had the brilliant idea to turn it into a Sarlacc pit! Nick was so excited about this! We just happen to have the toys that worked and minus Boba Fett, we had a pretty good Sarlacc pit scene. I think it turned out pretty awesome and Nick was thrilled!!Of course, I always just have the party goers eat cupcakes because it is soooo much easier. I made some lightsabers out of the cupcakes and the kids were excited to get those, along with some Yoda Soda to drink.

















After the cake we did a pinata, a Death Star one at that. I thought this would be super hard with so many kids but it worked well. We had the kids use their noodle lightsabers and then at the end, Ben whacked it while they used their force pushes to make it break. They were all so serious about forcing it. I wish I would've taken a picture of the intensity on their faces. It was great!!


Then, as the party was wrapping up, we unwrapped presents. Lots of kids equal lots of presents. I almost asked people not to give presents because the reason we have parties is just for the memory and not the presents. Nick got so spoiled!! He was so excited to get so many cool things. The best part was that he got like 5 of the same Lego sets. If Nick has two passions, it's Star Wars and Legos, so his friends hit it spot-on. Thanks friends!!!It was such a fun party and Nick loved every minute of having all of his tons of friends there to celebrate with him! Thanks to Grandma Cammi, Kendall, the Hoens, and the Tongs for crowd-control & help cleaning up. We couldn't have done it without you!!
For his real birthday (today) we started out with Nick's favorite breakfast, blueberry Pancake puffs. Nick was totally bummed about the idea of having to go to school on his birthday. Who can blame in? Birthdays should be a "day off" (Nick's word for Saturdays) for everyone! But, I still made him go. The bummer was that Skylar was not feeling so hot (so we missed our breakfast club with Nick's birthday buddy) and she got to stay home, which the birthday boy thought was totally unfair. I made it up for him by taking his favorite treat, ice cream sandwiches, to share with his class at the end.
We usually go out to a "resturnaut" on our kiddo's birthday but Nick decided that he would like to go see How to Train Your Dragon in 3-D so we did that instead. I'm pretty sure it would have been cheaper to go out to eat! Holy moley it's expensive to take a family of 6 to the movies, especially a 3-D one! But the movie was really good and we had a fun time. We told Nick he could pick where we could eat, but it couldn't be a sit-down restaurant. So, of course, he chose McDonald's because usually we would never, ever go there. What is the power that McDonald's has on kids? Oh well, it was his choice so we went and gagged down our food...and the boy was happy.
We headed home to eat ice cream and dig into the Sarlacc pit cake, which had been frozen since the party. Nick was stoked he actually got to eat the pit. We then opened presents from the family, as if he needed any more. He was super excited to get a microscope so he can begin doing some "research", some action figures, and of course, more Legos.



I'm so glad my little Nicky had such a great birthday. It's been kind of a difficult year for him working through all of his little kinks and trying so hard to be brave through it all. That kid deserves so much happiness for all the happiness he shares. He's such a sweet kid and always has his cute little smile that melts my heart. A hug from that kid can really make your day. I can't believe he's already a big kid. Can't they just stay little? I love you my sweet Nicky Duncan!!