Jack's Magic Tree House Party

Our Family

Jack had a great birthday party! It was better than I thought it would be - I wasn't sure if the boys would be into the whole "Magic Tree House" theme or if they would behave - or even if they would show up! But they loved the theme, were great participants and we had 6 of the 8 boys we invited come! They were so cute and excited to be a part of Jack's birthday party! A couple of them dressed up so nice with ties and they were all great listeners. There was one kid who needed to stay involved in an activity or would wander, but in Jack's defense - he said right before we were handing out invitations that he didn't want to invite him anymore because he wasn't really friends with him anymore. I asked if Jack had already told the boy he would be invited and Jack said yes, so we said he had to be invited. :)

SIDENOTE: Our house is super hard to find by directions. If you've been here before, it's the easiest house to find - but we don't have a "normal" Kuwaiti address for our house because of the area we live in. Normally someone would have a Block #, a Street #, a House # and the Area and you can use the GPS to drive right there. Most streets in Kuwait make total sense as to where things are and you can find them easily. Our area, however, is this super long thing strip that has a Cooperative #, a Street # and a Villa #. It's so hard to explain to anyone (drivers/delivery guys/etc) where we live. But, once you've been here, it's an easy, easy house to find.

Okay, so the plan was to have 5 activities planned that corresponded with 5 Magic Tree House books. Dan, Megan and Jack built a great fort upstairs that was our Magic Tree House and one leader would take the book I gave him, lead everyone upstairs to the Tree House, climb in the Tree House, they would all point to the book and shout "I wanna go there!" and then I would say, "The wind started to blow and the Tree House started to spin and it spun faster and faster until everything was still...absolutely still." (which is what happens in every Magic Tree House book). So, then we would come back downstairs and do the activity that went with that book! We had a dinosaur egg balloon popping time that went with Dinosaurs After Dark, a toilet paper mummy wrap that went with Mummies in the Morning, a game of "Pass the Parcel" with the surprise inside being a foaming volcano for High Tide in Hawaii, relay races for Hour of the Olympians, ate cake and ice cream, unwrapped presents and then did a treasure hunt for Pirates Past Noon with their goodie bags being the prize at the end! I think they all had a blast - it was so fun to have them here! They were well mannered and really like Jack - which I am so thankful for!

We asked every kid where they were from and here were their direct answers: Venezuela, Detroit, Kuwait, America, Toronto, Venezuela. Too cute!

Our front gate!

Birthday sign on our front door!

Decorations in the house

The awesome "Tree House" Dan, Megan and Jack built! The lamp in the center definitely made it!

Yet more decorations :)

The table - set with fun fabric and Magic Tree House books!

The boys colored for a bit while waiting for everyone to show up - Knights, Pirates and Dinosaurs!

All the Boys :)
Talib, Daniel, Aaron, Jack, Cesar, Chris and Essa

Dinosaur Egg balloon pop

Talib was the best! He could pop them right away and did a great job!

The boys in the Tree House pointing to where they want to go

Wrapping mummies!

The final product!

Pass the Parcel - All the boys won gum during the layers of wrapping paper and Cesar won the erupting volcano inside!

Relay races - Hopping down and back!

The Tree House cake - not great, but doable - Jack loved it, which is what mattered. And it tasted amazing!

Getting ready to sing Happy Birthday!

Jack blowing out his 8 candles!

Opening presents!

Opening more presents!

Pirate treasure hunt! Clues were placed all over the house - they had to read them and then run to the next place!

Waiting on parents, we had the kids play a quick round or 2 of Cars 2 :)