Star Wars: The Party

Bruce is turning six this week, and we had the party yesterday to celebrate. He invited classmates, kids from church, and neighbors too - so we had a big crowd. Bruce decided that he wanted a Star Wars-themed birthday party and while I refused to buy expensive Yoda plates and lightsabers for everyone, I did put together a few Star Wars games. The most exciting was the pinatas: I made three that looked like the heads of Darth Vader, General Grievous, and a Stormtrooper.
General Grievous proved to be a worthy opponent. He was a bit too sturdy and it took nearly 20 minutes of beating (and eventually stabbing with car keys) to finally break him. At least everyone got a turn, right? It took so long to break him that we only broke one other pinata before moving on to the next game. We had a "pin the X-wing on the Death Star" game where kids wrote their names on an X-wing and had to pin it on a paper Death Star's thermal exhaust port.

The last game didn't go over too well with Bruce. I had each kid write down a noun and tape it onto blank spaces in the Star Wars opening crawl - you know, mad lib style. It turned out like this:

"A long time ago in a GALAXY far, far away....

It is a period of REBEL Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden JEFFREY, have won their first BIRTHDAY against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, PLAYGROUND managed to steal secret DOGS to the Empire's Ultimate DANCE, the WHITE WORD, an armored space station with enough LEGOS to destroy an entire THE.

Pursued by the Empire's sinister CAT, Princess Leia races home aboard her DOG, custodian of the stolen DOLL that can save her JANINE and restore COOKING to the galaxy...."

Bruce thought it was a terrible idea to desecrate the holy opening crawl and insisted that his word - "GALAXY" - be placed where it was. His loyal friend tried to help him out with the "REBEL," but it eventually got sillier (or just more awful, according to Bruce).

We had watermelon, strawberries, pretzels, and cupcakes. The kids watched Bruce open his gazillion presents; he got lots of Legos and has been putting everything together today. More excitement to come on his birthday, but yesterday's celebration was wonderful.