This past Saturday, we celebrated Daniel’s 9th birthday with great games and fine food.

Daniel turned 9, and for his birthday present he requested that we have a birthday party at our place. Since we had thrown a party for Esther’s birthday last year, it only seemed fair. This time around, though, Daniel would be inviting some of his schoolmates to come.

The trouble is, while we have lots of experience with cooking dishes for big parties, we don’t have so much experience organizing kids’ party games. Thankfully, Annie’s colleague came to the rescue.

Getting Out of Limbo

Annie was expressing her stress about organizing games for the kids to her colleague at work. Her friend started listing out all these different games that she used to do for her daughter’s parties. Annie said, “hey since you’ve got the ideas and experience, could you run the party games for me?”

She graciously agreed.

On the day of the party, she came with her plan, her supplies, and one of her daughters to help. One of the first games she got going was limbo. Most of the kids had never seen this game before, but they took to it once they were given a demonstration. This one girl perfected the technique for the win.

Working Together

The next game involved two partners standing on a sheet of newspaper. As each round progressed, they would have to fold the sheet in half and then stand again, without their feet touching the floor. The first two rounds were easy but it got harder as the paper got smaller. Esther and her friend got pretty far along, thanks to their small feet!

Next was a memory game where the kids were given 1 minute to memorize objects on a plate and then 5 minutes to write or draw what they remembered seeing. It is very unusual to have all the kids silently and diligently writing, in the middle of a birthday party! 🙂

Pass it Along

The final game was called “Pass the Parcel”. A present had been prepared with layer upon layer of wrapping paper, with each layer having a label containing instructions for certain actions to be done. It’s kind of like “Hot Potato” with a twist.

As the music plays, the kids pass the parcel along. But when the music stops, the person holding the parcel has to tear off one layer of paper, read the instructions and carry them out. The instructions were pretty silly – hop like a bunny, stand and bow to the birthday boy, do jumping jacks.

It was a simple game but all the kids were excited and involved. A very fun way to pass the time. As the layers were torn away and the parcel got smaller, the anticipation grew as to what would be the next silly action to do. The final parcel was a small gift for the winner.

Let’s Eat!

Before you knew it, it was lunch time! We had gotten some food catered from a friend, and also ordered some fried chicken with the kids in mind.

Of course, we prepared a few dishes ourselves. The Japanese Sesame Salad with Chicken, Carrots and Cucumber was more for the adults, but the chicken cocktail sausage with pineapple was definitely a kid favorite.

The birthday cake was a variation on our layer cake recipe but using diced fresh mango between the layers, mango extract in the cream, and thin slices of mango on top. Another hit, for kids and grownups alike.

Happy Birthday, Daniel

I’m sure Daniel would love it if you leave a birthday greeting for him in the comments below!

The remainder of the party was spent playing Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 on the Wii. We like the game because it’s fun for all ages and not violent (unless you count shooting an alien rabbit in the face with a toilet plunger violent). It sure helps to have a not-so-big crowd and 4 Wii-mote controllers!

Finally, the parents started showing up to pick their kids up. I managed to get a few pics of Daniel with his schoolmates and friends before they left.

All-in-all, a good party. It was very helpful to have hired a maid to come in and help clean before, during and after the party so that we could focus on interacting with our guests. The only sad part was that not all of the invited kids came, and few parents actually stayed behind to eat lunch. So we had a LOT of food leftover.

But that’s also a blessing in disguise, since we can just freeze the leftovers and reheat them later, when we get back from our trip.

What trip, you ask?

Well, my youngest sister is getting married, so all of us are going back to Hawaii to be with the family for the joyous occasion. We leave tonight, and I hope to be blogging from home in a few days. And just like we blogged our last trip to Hawaii in 2008, we’ll be sharing our Hawaiian foodie experiences with you.

So stay tuned!

Aloha, Nate

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