Joseph's Baseball Party

Group picture! It's lightly raining throughout the warm day, so the pictures aren't very clear. Sunflower seed spitting contest The balloon toss was fun Beach ball baseball game, Joseph is about to nail this one. Group silly picture! Our little family party! We made a baseball cake. It's almost totally healthy. It's low sugar with only good oil, and it tasted great!! It's sitting on a paper mitt. We had fun making it together. Here's the birthday boy reading one of his cards

For Joseph's 8th Birthday he wanted a baseball party at our home. So we did a little research and planned a party with games to last a few hours for about 12 kids, mostly boys (just the number to fit around the table). We had a super fun day! We decorated and everyone dressed in baseball clothes. We don't have a big field for a yard, and boys have a lot of energy, so we had a schedule and a list of games to be completed. I was the host, caterer, organizer and occasional Mom to two toddlers running around (Leesie used this opportunity to sneak a record number of lollipops). My neighbor helped save us with an extra hand in the kitchen preparing last minute ballpark food. Bill was the games man, the head sports guy and baseball almanac and a fine job he did.

So the first was a guessing game. As the guests arrived they were given a secret name of a famous baseball player in history on their back and they had to ask yes or no questions to discover the answer. They had help from the roster, which had clues, like their teams' names, etc. It was fun and educational (bonus). Second we had a pitching contest throwing very soft balls into a blow up catcher man with a hole in his tummy. This too was fun, and harder than it looked, and the guest with a walking cast won! (There's no bench time for anyone at this party). Later we used blow up man for diving into and tackling during free time. Our boys love to take a right hook to the guy too. Third was a sunflower seed spitting contest. There's nothing like permission to spit in front of an audience of young peers. There was some talent in those spitters. Fourth was a baseball game played with a large beach ball that looks like a baseball and a wiffle bat. Fifth, there was going to be water balloon toss using baseball caps, but we modified it to regular toss, moving backward in distance each round. It was a warm misty day, so the weather was great for this.

Then we came inside had baseball food. They had already been drinking sports drinks and shelling peanuts between games. I served organic hotdogs in foil like you see at the ballpark (they taste like regular), nachos, and popcorn in the red paper holders like they do at the theatre/ballpark. Then we had cake and some Handel's ice cream. It's amazing what kids can eat and still feel great. We were really happy to see the kids were so well behaved. We had a most creative birthday song contest. Bill came in as the winner singing some happy birthday chicken song with a funny chicken imitation. Then they all discussed their favorite restaurants, I think Rain Forest Cafe came in as a top favorite. We took a team picture, and everyone sacked Joseph (small mistake, he needed a moment to recover from that). Then we went back outside and beat the baseball pinata and had random play and gift bags full of little baseball bats filled with gum, baby ruth candy bars, big league chew, baseball cards, random toys and little chocolate balls with baseball foil. It was a fun little party. I felt like I do on Christmas, so good, and so tired! We asked Joseph to try and stay eight for at least two more years, he's growing up way too fast! He's 4'8 and 75 lbs. He's gonna be a big guy one day. In the meantime we'll just cherish every minute of the little boy we have here.