I spent the week before the party planning the food and decorations.  I can’t throw a party without a themed plan.  This one was obviously a camping theme.  The invitations were first up.  I made a tent with rolled flaps, the Camp Anderson title on it and then the pertinent details on the inside.  The funny part was when I was trying to write those pertinent details and get them perfectly spaced, I somehow left out the ‘E’ in Anderson.  Lael saw that and decided that she would write the pertinent details on her invitations.  I added a Camp Anderson banner to welcome everyone along with a Sign in station where the kids signed in with their real names, received their camp names, their flashlights, bandanas, cups and glow sticks.  Lael helped me with the camp names.  We had Laughing Striped Zebra, Running Wild Tiger etc.  Some of the kids really got into the names, others were not so thrilled with theirs!  Their flashlights and cups had their names on them and the plan was for them to use them all through the day/night.  That plan didn’t work out perfectly, but I tried!  Those were their party favors and I tied them up into the cutest little hobo packs for them to toss over their shoulder to take home.  The food consisted of Dirt Cups with gummy worms, Campcorn, Campfire cupcakes and Bug Juice.  They were not all that excited abut the Dirt Cups, I don’t know if it was the dirt or the worms that threw them off.  The Bug Juice though was gone as quick as lightning!

For the actual party, I started off by trying to think of things to keep them busy.  I came up with several group games that included a Relay Race through the Sleeping Bag Forest, Egg Spoon Race, Balloon Pop, Lifesaver Relay and a Silly String War.  You can guess which game was their favorite!!  Next I had to toss in a few crafty things, like tie-dyed t-shirts and Bottlecap necklaces.  I was surprised that the boys were into the necklaces!!  Both the boys and girls had equally dyed hands from making the t-shirts!

I also made them work for their dinner – we made Hobo Chicken.  They each made up their own foil packets of food and placed them on the fire.  It smelled delicious cooking.  We might have overestimated the time needed to cook though, some packets came out a bit scorched.  We ended the night by roasting marshmallows over the fire pit and NOT telling ghost stories.  The girls were in their tent all crowded up into a bunch, the boys were in their tent, nicely spaced out.  Apparently if you are an 8 year old boy you shouldn’t touch another boy at any point while sleeping.  Todd and I had our own tent.  Also surprising was the noise level in the boys tent was higher than the girls tent!  Go figure!  All in all, I think it was an amazing success.  I hope that Camp Anderson will be a birthday for them to remember.

Having twins also makes it sort of hard to make the birthday special for each of them.  I mean think about it – your birthday is your own special day, right?  I’m sure there are tons of people in the world who have your birthday, but usually nobody really close to you, probably not someone who will be at the table with you trying to blow out the candles before you do!  Wait, that is a story for another time……Anyway, with a scavenger hunt they take turns reading each clue out loud – then off they go running toward where they think the clue leads them.  Sometimes the child who strikes out in front is on the right path, but sometimes they are not and are leading the other into a dead end.  Lael is often the one who takes off first without thinking the clue all the way through.  Caeden will wait and try to puzzle through the clue before running.  The problem with that is, is that Lael is often on the right track, maybe not 100% but she is in the general area, so then she just starts looking around.  Thus she will find most of the clues first.  We may have to go to separate scavenger hunts in the future!  For this particular hunt, I had them crisscrossing the lake lot, going from Poppy’s truck, to the boat, to the mailbox, to the clothesline, to the hammock, to the dinner bell and finally ending in the garage where the presents were stashed.

Lael had been asking for a pink guitar.  Luckily Walmart came through with a relatively inexpensive one.  Inexpensive because I am betting that she will play it for a week or so, then give up when she can’t belt out Sweet Home Alabama immediately!  Maybe I can look into guitar lessons?!?  Caeden had not really asked for much of anything.  While I was browsing WalMart with the pink guitar hoping something fabulous would jump off the shelf into my cart, I found a little electric guitar that you could plug into the tv or your iPod and jam.  I decided that would be perfect!  Caeden is definitely much more the electic guitar type!!  He must have gotten his musical tastes from his Daddy!  His iPod is full of stuff that hurts my ears!  So, they both ended up with guitars and they were both a huge hit!

It’s official – the twins are now 6!! They have been waiting on this day for months now, they’ve been saying 5 1/2, 5 3/4, and now they can say, Yes! I am 6! We had a small family party on Sunday with my parents and Todd’s parents. Caeden was dead set on having the candles that re-light themselves, like Chace had. I tried to explain to him that the whole point of them was that the birthday child was tricked by the candles magically re-lighting, and that if he knew they were going to do it, it wasn’t a trick. We had them anyway! On their birthday we had a pool party for the neighborhood kids. It was of course great fun! Kids, + water, + cupcakes, + snow cones = Big Fun!

Chace – 13!