I can’t believe Evan is almost 5 already! Today we had a birthday party for him, so that I could be there with all the kids. His birthday is actually tomorrow.
We had a great time with around 12 kids showing up for the party. Evan loved the attention and all the “fighting” the kids could do (we made balloon swords for everybody) and there was a lot of going upstairs, then downstairs, then upstairs etc. It’s quite interesting to see the dynamics amongst the kids, like who’s the leader, the follower, the nutter, the strong silent type etc. I sometimes hardly recognise my son’s behaviour, since it’s often so different to what I’m used to!
We played bunch of games – the first being “find the blue stones around the house”. The kids gathered the stones from around the house and got a chocolate coin for each blue stone. There were 2 winners; the kids who gathered the most stones.
Then we played “musical power-rangers” which is a spin on musical chairs. We made card-board cut-outs of power-ranger heads and placed them on the floor. Then played music and the kids had to walk around the squares until the music stopped and then find a square to sit on. Every round we’d take one square away, so there was one less place to sit and the kid who couldn’t find a spot to sit, they were eliminated.
Then we had some food, of which Yoshie made some very yummy Norimaki. The kids liked the chicken balls the best probably, and maybe the sausages.
After lunch we played some more games, pass the parcel and “pin the sword on the power-ranger” (pin the tail on the donkey). The kids seemed to enjoy it pretty well.
Nicole made a power-ranger cake and we had 5 candles and a number 5 candle (so in theory there were 6 candles as Evan pointed out!). Lots of ice-cream with that and the kids were pretty full.
Evan got lots of presents and Eric really wanted Evan to open his present, so he started opening his presents. Annie and Hideo got Evan a bunch of dinosaur-model things which was very generous of them. They always spend too much money on us. Other notables were legos and some cool stuff from Yoshie and Fumio; a studio Ghibli bag and a good luck charm (for being the smartest boy in school).
We watched a bit of Superman (I) afterwards, but it was too slow for Evan, although Lauren seemed to really enjoy it.
All it all, it was a busy but fun day today.
Tomorrow Evan gets his other presents…